Hidden inside handovers sit handovers and overhands, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 16 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 480 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
handovers and overhands tie for the highest Scrabble score from handovers at 16 points. The top 10 of 480 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in handovers: one comes from rearranging its letters, and handovers itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these nine-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are handovers and overhands, each worth 16 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 3 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in handovers. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are handover and overhand, each worth 15 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in handovers produces 9 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 dehorns, hadrons, handers, hardens, oversad, savored, and vendors, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling handovers turns up 64 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with adores, hoards, reason, shared, shaved, shaven, and shoved. For points, the strongest plays are shaved and shoved — each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 138 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in handovers. If a familiar word is all you need, start with adore, dares, dears, drove, earns, hands, and heads. For points, the strongest plays are haven, haver, haves, hover, shave, and shove — each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in handovers produces 147 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with near, nerd, nose, ones, oven, over, and rash. For points, the strongest plays are have and hove — each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling handovers turns up 88 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ads, and, are, ash, ear, end, and era. For points, the strongest plays are dah, dev, doh, edh, had, and hod — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 29 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in handovers. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, ah, an, as, do, eh, and ha. For points, the strongest plays are ah, eh, ha, he, ho, oh, and sh — each worth 5 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 handovers and you get a different nine-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 8 of the 9 letters, not all of them.
handovers 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 handovers. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 16 points on a Scrabble board:
handovers is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing handovers unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are handovers and overhands, worth 16 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from handovers 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 handovers produce 480 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 3 eight-letter words, 9 seven-letter words, 64 six-letter words, 138 five-letter words, 147 four-letter words, 88 three-letter words and 29 two-letter words.