elder needs no unscrambling at all — the five-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 6 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 24 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
elder is the highest-scoring word from elder, worth 6 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 24 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one five-letter word uses the letters in elder — and it is elder itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 6 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in elder produces 9 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with deer. For points, the strongest plays are deer, dele, dere, dree, lede, rede, and reed — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling elder turns up 9 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with led and red. For points, the strongest plays are dee, del, eld, led, and red — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 5 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in elder. No common everyday answer stands out among these two-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are de and ed, each worth 3 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Swap a single tile in elder and you get a different five-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 4 of the 5 letters, not all of them.
elder 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 four senses for elder. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 6 points on a Scrabble board:
elder is the only five-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing elder unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is elder, worth 6 points in Scrabble, and no other word from elder 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 elder produce 24 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 five-letter word, 9 four-letter words, 9 three-letter words and 5 two-letter words.