jolly needs no unscrambling at all — the five-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 15 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 6 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
jolly is the highest-scoring word from jolly, worth 15 points in Scrabble. The top 6 of 6 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one five-letter word uses the letters in jolly — and it is jolly itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 15 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling jolly produces exactly one three-letter word: joy. It is an everyday word and an easy play, worth 13 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in jolly 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.
jolly 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 3-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 jolly. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 15 points on a Scrabble board:
jolly is the only five-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing jolly unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is jolly, worth 15 points in Scrabble, and no other word from jolly 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 jolly produce 6 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 five-letter word, 1 three-letter word and 4 two-letter words.