bury and ruby tie for the highest Scrabble score from ruby at 9 points. The top 8 of 8 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 four-letter words hiding in ruby: one comes from rearranging its letters, and ruby itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bury. For points, the strongest plays are bury and ruby — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling ruby turns up 5 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with buy and rub. For points, the strongest play is buy — worth 8 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
Unscrambling ruby produces exactly one two-letter word: by. It is an everyday word and an easy play, worth 7 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in ruby 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.
ruby 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 1-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record four senses for ruby. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
ruby is one of two four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing ruby unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are bury and ruby, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from ruby 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 ruby produce 8 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 1 two-letter word.