Hidden inside pastiches sit pastiches and pistaches, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 16 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 473 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
pastiches and pistaches tie for the highest Scrabble score from pastiches at 16 points. The top 10 of 473 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in pastiches: one comes from rearranging its letters, and pastiches itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these nine-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are pastiches and pistaches, each worth 16 points in Scrabble.
There are 7 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in pastiches. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are chipsets, hepatics, pastiche, and pistache, each worth 15 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in pastiches produces 30 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with patches and pitches. For points, 8 words tie at 14 points, including patches, pitches and aphetic.
Unscrambling pastiches turns up 65 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with cashes, chases and cheats. For points, 7 words tie at 13 points, including capish, chapes and cheaps.
There are 124 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in pastiches. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ashes, capes and cases. For points, 10 words tie at 12 points, including cheap, chips and patch.
Rearranging the letters in pastiches produces 142 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with acts, apes and pact. For points, the strongest plays are pech, caph, chap, and chip — each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling pastiches turns up 82 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with act, ape and ash. For points, 10 words tie at 8 points, including hip, chi and hap.
There are 21 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in pastiches. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ah, as and at. For points, 6 words tie at 5 points, including ah, eh and ha.
5 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in pastiches plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in pastiches and you get a different nine-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 8 of the 9 letters, not all of them.
pastiches 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.
pastiches is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing pastiches unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are pastiches and pistaches, worth 16 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from pastiches 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 pastiches produce 473 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 7 eight-letter words, 30 seven-letter words, 65 six-letter words, 124 five-letter words, 142 four-letter words, 82 three-letter words and 21 two-letter words.