Hidden inside inlay sit inlay and layin, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 8 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 26 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
inlay and layin tie for the highest Scrabble score from inlay at 8 points. The top 10 of 26 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 five-letter words hiding in inlay: one comes from rearranging its letters, and inlay itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these five-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are inlay and layin, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in inlay produces 6 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with nail. For points, the strongest plays are ayin, inly, and liny — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling inlay turns up 9 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with any and lay. For points, the strongest plays are any, lay, nay, and yin — each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 9 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in inlay. If a familiar word is all you need, start with an, ay, and in. For points, the strongest plays are ay and ya — 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 inlay 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.
inlay 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 three senses for inlay. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 8 points on a Scrabble board:
inlay is one of two five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing inlay unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are inlay and layin, worth 8 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from inlay 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 inlay produce 26 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 five-letter words, 6 four-letter words, 9 three-letter words and 9 two-letter words.