Hidden inside sanction sit actinons, canonist, contains and 2 others, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 10 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 202 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
actinons, canonist, contains and 5 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from sanction at 10 points. The top 10 of 202 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 5 eight-letter words hiding in sanction: four come from rearranging its letters, and sanction itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with contains. For points, 5 words tie at 10 points, including contains, actinons and canonist.
Rearranging the letters in sanction produces 11 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with actions, contain, and nations. For points, 8 words tie at 9 points, including actions, contain and actinon.
Unscrambling sanction turns up 26 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with action, cannot, casino, and nation. For points, 20 words tie at 8 points, including action, cannot and casino.
There are 44 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sanction. If a familiar word is all you need, start with coast, coats and coins. For points, 29 words tie at 7 points, including coast, coats and coins.
Rearranging the letters in sanction produces 59 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with acts, ants and cans. For points, 26 words tie at 6 points, including acts, cans and cast.
Unscrambling sanction turns up 40 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with act, ant and can. For points, 12 words tie at 5 points, including act, can and cat.
There are 17 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sanction. If a familiar word is all you need, start with an, as and at. For points, 17 words tie at 2 points, including an, as and at.
13 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in sanction plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in sanction and you get a different eight-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 7 of the 8 letters, not all of them.
sanction 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 seven senses for sanction. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 10 points on a Scrabble board:
sanction is one of five eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing sanction unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are actinons, canonist, contains, sanction, and sonantic, worth 10 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from sanction 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 sanction produce 202 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 5 eight-letter words, 11 seven-letter words, 26 six-letter words, 44 five-letter words, 59 four-letter words, 40 three-letter words and 17 two-letter words.