Hidden inside pays sit pays, pyas, spay and 1 other, four-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 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.
pays, pyas, spay and 6 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from pays at 9 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 pays: three come from rearranging its letters, and pays itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with pays. For points, the strongest plays are pays, pyas, spay, and yaps — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling pays turns up 11 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with pay, say, and spy. For points, the strongest plays are pay, pya, spy, and yap — each worth 8 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 pays. If a familiar word is all you need, start with as and ay. For points, the strongest plays are ay and ya — each worth 5 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 pays 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.
pays 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.
Both totals match, because every tile in pays carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record twelve senses for pays. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
pays is one of four four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing pays unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are pays, pyas, spay, and yaps, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from pays 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 pays 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.