Hidden inside primaries sit impairers and primaries, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 13 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 280 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
impairers and primaries tie for the highest Scrabble score from primaries at 13 points. The top 10 of 280 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in primaries: one comes from rearranging its letters, and primaries 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 impairers and primaries, each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
There are 2 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in primaries. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is impairer, worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in primaries produces 16 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with marries and repairs. For points, 7 words tie at 11 points, including impairs, imperia and impresa.
Unscrambling primaries turns up 34 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with armies, praise, repair, and sparer. For points, 8 words tie at 10 points, including impair, prearm and primas.
There are 70 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in primaries. If a familiar word is all you need, start with pairs, prime and raise. For points, 12 words tie at 9 points, including prime, ramps and sperm.
Rearranging the letters in primaries produces 83 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aims, airs and apes. For points, 14 words tie at 8 points, including maps, ramp and amps.
Unscrambling primaries turns up 56 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aim, air and ape. For points, the strongest plays are amp, imp, map, and pam — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
There are 17 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in primaries. If a familiar word is all you need, start with am, as, is, and me. For points, 8 words tie at 4 points, including am, me and em.
1 ten-letter word can be made using all the letters in primaries plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in primaries 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.
primaries 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 eight senses for primaries. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 13 points on a Scrabble board:
primaries is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing primaries unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are impairers and primaries, worth 13 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from primaries 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 primaries produce 280 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 2 eight-letter words, 16 seven-letter words, 34 six-letter words, 70 five-letter words, 83 four-letter words, 56 three-letter words and 17 two-letter words.