Hidden inside serial sit ariels, resail, sailer and 2 others, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 6 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 119 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble REASLI, AERILS or ASERIL and you get the same 6 letters as SERIAL: so the words from SERIAL listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
ariels, resail, sailer and 5 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from serial at 6 points. The top 10 of 119 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 5 six-letter words hiding in serial: four come from rearranging its letters, and serial itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with serial. For points, 5 words tie at 6 points, including serial, ariels and resail.
There are 25 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in serial. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aisle, laser, liars, and raise. For points, 25 words tie at 5 points, including aisle, laser and liars.
Rearranging the letters in serial produces 45 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with airs, ears and eras. For points, 45 words tie at 4 points, including airs, ears and eras.
Unscrambling serial turns up 31 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with air, are and ear. For points, 31 words tie at 3 points, including air, are and ear.
38 seven-letter words can be made using all the letters in serial plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in serial and you get a different six-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 5 of the 6 letters, not all of them.
serial 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 six senses for serial. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 6 points on a Scrabble board:
serial is one of five six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing serial unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are ariels, resail, sailer, serail, and serial, worth 6 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from serial 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 serial produce 119 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 5 six-letter words, 25 five-letter words, 45 four-letter words, 31 three-letter words and 13 two-letter words.