Hidden inside penates sit nepetas and penates, seven-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 159 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
nepetas and penates tie for the highest Scrabble score from penates at 9 points. The top 10 of 159 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 seven-letter words hiding in penates: one comes from rearranging its letters, and penates itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are nepetas and penates, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling penates turns up 8 six-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are etapes, nepeta, patens and 2 more, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
There are 35 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in penates. If a familiar word is all you need, start with eaten, pants and penes. For points, 23 words tie at 7 points, including pants, penes and spent.
Rearranging the letters in penates produces 60 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ants, apes and ease. For points, 32 words tie at 6 points, including apes, naps and pans.
Unscrambling penates turns up 41 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ant, ape and ate. For points, 16 words tie at 5 points, including ape, nap and pan.
There are 13 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in penates. If a familiar word is all you need, start with an, as, and at. For points, the strongest plays are pa and pe — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
4 eight-letter words can be made using all the letters in penates plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in penates and you get a different seven-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 6 of the 7 letters, not all of them.
penates 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.
penates is one of two seven-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing penates unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are nepetas and penates, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from penates 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 penates produce 159 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 seven-letter words, 8 six-letter words, 35 five-letter words, 60 four-letter words, 41 three-letter words and 13 two-letter words.