Hidden inside scourges sit scourges and scrouges, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 169 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
scourges and scrouges tie for the highest Scrabble score from scourges at 11 points. The top 10 of 169 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 eight-letter words hiding in scourges: one comes from rearranging its letters, and scourges itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are scourges and scrouges, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in scourges produces 6 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with courses and sources. For points, the strongest plays are scourge and scrouge — each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling scourges turns up 24 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with course, curses, scores, and source. For points, 13 words tie at 8 points, including course, curses and scores.
There are 40 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in scourges. If a familiar word is all you need, start with cores, cross and cures. For points, 15 words tie at 7 points, including cores, cross and cures.
Rearranging the letters in scourges produces 51 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with core, cues and cure. For points, the strongest play is cogs — worth 7 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling scourges turns up 37 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with cue, ego and our. For points, the strongest play is cog — worth 6 points in Scrabble.
2 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in scourges plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in scourges 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.
scourges 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 six senses for scourges. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
scourges is one of two eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing scourges unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are scourges and scrouges, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from scourges 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 scourges produce 169 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 eight-letter words, 6 seven-letter words, 24 six-letter words, 40 five-letter words, 51 four-letter words, 37 three-letter words and 9 two-letter words.