Hidden inside knurling sit knurling and runkling, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 13 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 63 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
knurling and runkling tie for the highest Scrabble score from knurling at 13 points. The top 10 of 63 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 eight-letter words hiding in knurling: one comes from rearranging its letters, and knurling itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are knurling and runkling, each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in knurling produces 2 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is lurking, worth 12 points in Scrabble.
There are 6 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in knurling. No common everyday answer stands out among these five-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is knurl, worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in knurling produces 21 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with girl, king and link. For points, the strongest plays are gink, gunk, and king — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling knurling turns up 22 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with gun, ink and nun. For points, 5 words tie at 7 points, including ink, ilk and irk.
Swap a single tile in knurling and you get a different eight-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 7 of the 8 letters, not all of them.
knurling 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 5-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
knurling is one of two eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing knurling unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are knurling and runkling, worth 13 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from knurling 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 knurling produce 63 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 eight-letter words, 2 seven-letter words, 4 six-letter words, 6 five-letter words, 21 four-letter words, 22 three-letter words and 6 two-letter words.