Hidden inside samples sit mapless and samples, seven-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 140 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble LEMPASS, SEALMPS or MASSEPL and you get the same 7 letters as SAMPLES: so the words from SAMPLES listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
mapless and samples tie for the highest Scrabble score from samples at 11 points. The top 10 of 140 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 seven-letter words hiding in samples: one comes from rearranging its letters, and samples itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with samples. For points, the strongest plays are mapless and samples — each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling samples turns up 9 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with maples and sample. For points, the strongest plays are maples, plasms, psalms, and sample — each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
There are 35 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in samples. If a familiar word is all you need, start with lamps, leaps and males. For points, 9 words tie at 9 points, including lamps, maple and ample.
Rearranging the letters in samples produces 51 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with apes, lame and lamp. For points, 7 words tie at 8 points, including lamp, maps and amps.
Unscrambling samples turns up 31 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ape, ass and lap. For points, the strongest plays are amp, map, and pam — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
There are 12 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in samples. If a familiar word is all you need, start with am, as, and me. For points, 6 words tie at 4 points, including am, me and em.
3 eight-letter words can be made using all the letters in samples plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in samples and you get a different seven-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 6 of the 7 letters, not all of them.
samples 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 four senses for samples. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
samples is one of two seven-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing samples unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are mapless and samples, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from samples 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 samples produce 140 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 seven-letter words, 9 six-letter words, 35 five-letter words, 51 four-letter words, 31 three-letter words and 12 two-letter words.