Hidden inside recursion sit coinsurer and recursion, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 327 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
coinsurer and recursion tie for the highest Scrabble score from recursion at 11 points. The top 10 of 327 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in recursion: one comes from rearranging its letters, and recursion 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 coinsurer and recursion, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
There are 5 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in recursion. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are coinsure, couriers, insource and 2 more, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in recursion produces 25 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with corners. For points, 21 words tie at 9 points, including corners, cirrose and cirrous.
Unscrambling recursion turns up 60 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with corner, course and cousin. For points, 41 words tie at 8 points, including corner, course and cousin.
There are 85 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in recursion. If a familiar word is all you need, start with coins, cones and cores. For points, 49 words tie at 7 points, including coins, cones and cores.
Rearranging the letters in recursion produces 78 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with coin, cone and cons. For points, 34 words tie at 6 points, including coin, cone and cons.
Unscrambling recursion turns up 54 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with con, cue and ice. For points, 16 words tie at 5 points, including con, cue and ice.
There are 18 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in recursion. If a familiar word is all you need, start with in, is and no. For points, 18 words tie at 2 points, including in, is and no.
4 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in recursion plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in recursion 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.
recursion 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 one sense for recursion. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
recursion is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing recursion unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are coinsurer and recursion, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from recursion 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 recursion produce 327 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 5 eight-letter words, 25 seven-letter words, 60 six-letter words, 85 five-letter words, 78 four-letter words, 54 three-letter words and 18 two-letter words.