Hidden inside rates sit aster, rates, resat and 4 others, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 5 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 70 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble STERA, TAESR or RTSAE and you get the same 5 letters as RATES: so the words from RATES listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
aster, rates, resat and 3 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from rates at 5 points. The top 10 of 70 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 7 five-letter words hiding in rates: six come from rearranging its letters, and rates itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with rates, stare, and tears. For points, 7 words tie at 5 points, including rates, stare and tears.
Rearranging the letters in rates produces 28 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with arts, ears and east. For points, 28 words tie at 4 points, including arts, ears and east.
Unscrambling rates turns up 25 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with are, art and ate. For points, 25 words tie at 3 points, including are, art and ate.
108 six-letter words can be made using all the letters in rates plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in rates and you get a different five-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 4 of the 5 letters, not all of them.
rates 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 rates carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record one sense for rates. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 5 points on a Scrabble board:
rates is one of seven five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing rates unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are aster, rates, resat, stare, tares, taser, and tears, worth 5 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from rates 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 rates produce 70 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 7 five-letter words, 28 four-letter words, 25 three-letter words and 10 two-letter words.