Hidden inside deviates sit deviates and sedative, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 201 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
deviates and sedative tie for the highest Scrabble score from deviates at 12 points. The top 10 of 201 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 eight-letter words hiding in deviates: one comes from rearranging its letters, and deviates itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are deviates and sedative, each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in deviates produces 5 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are advisee, datives, deviate, and vistaed, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling deviates turns up 21 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with advise, seated, and teased. For points, 15 words tie at 10 points, including advise, dative and davies.
There are 43 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in deviates. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aside, dates and diets. For points, 10 words tie at 9 points, including dives, saved and davit.
Rearranging the letters in deviates produces 66 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aids, date and dies. For points, 9 words tie at 8 points, including dive, avid and deva.
Unscrambling deviates turns up 47 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ads, aid and ate. For points, the strongest plays are dev and vid — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
There are 17 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in deviates. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, as and at. For points, 5 words tie at 3 points, including ad, id and da.
5 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in deviates plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in deviates and you get a different eight-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 7 of the 8 letters, not all of them.
deviates is in the NWL, the official Scrabble word list for North America, and in the Words With Friends dictionary, so it's playable exactly as it stands and needs no unscrambling.
The 1-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record five senses for deviates. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 12 points on a Scrabble board:
deviates is one of two eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing deviates unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are deviates and sedative, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from deviates earns more points in Scrabble. Words With Friends prices the same letters differently, so the top of the list changes on a Words With Friends board. Both scores count tile values only and exclude premium squares.
The letters in deviates produce 201 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 eight-letter words, 5 seven-letter words, 21 six-letter words, 43 five-letter words, 66 four-letter words, 47 three-letter words and 17 two-letter words.