perplexes needs no unscrambling at all — the nine-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 20 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 91 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
perplexes is the highest-scoring word from perplexes, worth 20 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 91 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one nine-letter word uses the letters in perplexes — and it is perplexes itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 20 points in Scrabble.
There are 2 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in perplexes. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is reexpels, worth 17 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in perplexes produces 6 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are perplex and perspex, each worth 18 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling perplexes turns up 7 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with expels. For points, the strongest plays are expels, plexes, and prexes — each worth 15 points in Scrabble.
There are 25 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in perplexes. If a familiar word is all you need, start with expel, peels, and sleep. For points, the strongest play is expel — worth 14 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in perplexes produces 26 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with else, exes and peel. For points, the strongest plays are plex and prex — each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling perplexes turns up 18 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with pee, per and rep. For points, the strongest plays are lex, rex, and sex — each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
1 ten-letter word can be made using all the letters in perplexes plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in perplexes 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.
perplexes 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 3-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record two senses for perplexes. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 20 points on a Scrabble board:
perplexes is the only nine-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing perplexes unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is perplexes, worth 20 points in Scrabble, and no other word from perplexes 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 perplexes produce 91 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 nine-letter word, 2 eight-letter words, 6 seven-letter words, 7 six-letter words, 25 five-letter words, 26 four-letter words, 18 three-letter words and 6 two-letter words.