ago and goa tie for the highest Scrabble score from goa at 4 points. The top 4 of 4 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 three-letter words hiding in goa: one comes from rearranging its letters, and goa itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ago. For points, the strongest plays are ago and goa — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in goa and you get a different three-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 2 of the 3 letters, not all of them.
goa 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 one sense for goa. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 4 points on a Scrabble board:
goa is one of two three-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing goa unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are ago and goa, worth 4 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from goa 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 goa produce 4 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 three-letter words and 2 two-letter words.