Hidden inside smiles sit missel, slimes, and smiles, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 8 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 54 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble LEISMS, MISESL or IEMSSL and you get the same 6 letters as SMILES: so the words from SMILES listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
missel, slimes, and smiles tie for the highest Scrabble score from smiles at 8 points. The top 10 of 54 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 six-letter words hiding in smiles: two come from rearranging its letters, and smiles itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with smiles. For points, the strongest plays are missel, slimes, and smiles — each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
There are 9 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in smiles. If a familiar word is all you need, start with miles and smile. For points, 8 words tie at 7 points, including miles, smile and limes.
Rearranging the letters in smiles produces 18 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with less, lies and mess. For points, 12 words tie at 6 points, including mess, mile and miss.
There are 8 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in smiles. If a familiar word is all you need, start with is and me. For points, the strongest plays are em, me, and mi — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in smiles and you get a different six-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 5 of the 6 letters, not all of them.
smiles 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 2-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 smiles. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 8 points on a Scrabble board:
smiles is one of three six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing smiles unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are missel, slimes, and smiles, worth 8 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from smiles 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 smiles produce 54 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 six-letter words, 9 five-letter words, 18 four-letter words, 16 three-letter words and 8 two-letter words.