Hidden inside ideal sit ailed and ideal, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 6 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 40 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
ailed and ideal tie for the highest Scrabble score from ideal at 6 points. The top 10 of 40 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 five-letter words hiding in ideal: one comes from rearranging its letters, and ideal itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ideal. For points, the strongest plays are ailed and ideal — each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in ideal produces 14 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with deal, deli, dial, idea, laid, lead, and lied. For points, the strongest plays are aide, dale, deal, deil, deli, dial, diel, idea, idle, lade, laid, lead, and lied — 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 ideal turns up 13 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aid, die, lad, led, lid, and lie. For points, the strongest plays are aid, dal, del, die, eld, lad, led, and lid — 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 11 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in ideal. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad and id. For points, the strongest plays are ad, da, de, ed, and id — each worth 3 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
40 six-letter words can be made using all the letters in ideal plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in ideal 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.
ideal 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 ideal. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 6 points on a Scrabble board:
ideal is one of two five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing ideal unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are ailed and ideal, worth 6 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from ideal 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 ideal produce 40 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 five-letter words, 14 four-letter words, 13 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.