Hidden inside lima sit lima and mail, four-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 6 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 14 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
lima and mail tie for the highest Scrabble score from lima at 6 points. The top 10 of 14 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 four-letter words hiding in lima: one comes from rearranging its letters, and lima itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with mail. For points, the strongest plays are lima and mail — 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 lima turns up 5 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aim. For points, the strongest plays are aim, ami, lam, and mil — 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 7 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in lima. If a familiar word is all you need, start with am. For points, the strongest plays are am, ma, and mi — each 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 lima 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.
lima 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.
Dictionaries record one sense for lima. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 6 points on a Scrabble board:
lima is one of two four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing lima unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are lima and mail, worth 6 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from lima 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 lima produce 14 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 four-letter words, 5 three-letter words and 7 two-letter words.