Hidden inside past sit past, pats, spat and 1 other, four-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 6 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 19 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
past, pats, spat and 6 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from past at 6 points. The top 10 of 19 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 4 four-letter words hiding in past: three come from rearranging its letters, and past itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with past, spat, and taps. For points, the strongest plays are past, pats, spat, and taps — each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling past turns up 11 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with sat and tap. For points, the strongest plays are apt, asp, pas, pat, pst, sap, spa, and tap — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 4 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in past. If a familiar word is all you need, start with as and at. For points, the strongest play is pa — worth 4 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 past and you get a different four-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 3 of the 4 letters, not all of them.
past 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 six senses for past. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 6 points on a Scrabble board:
past is one of four four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing past unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are past, pats, spat, and taps, worth 6 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from past 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 past produce 19 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 4 four-letter words, 11 three-letter words and 4 two-letter words.