Hidden inside shamus sit samshu and shamus, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 40 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
samshu and shamus tie for the highest Scrabble score from shamus at 11 points. The top 10 of 40 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 six-letter words hiding in shamus: one comes from rearranging its letters, and shamus itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are samshu and shamus, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 3 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shamus. If a familiar word is all you need, start with smash. For points, the strongest plays are shams, smash, and smush — each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in shamus produces 10 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with hams and mass. For points, the strongest plays are hams, hums, mash, mush, and sham — 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 shamus turns up 14 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ash, ass, ham, and has. For points, the strongest plays are ham and hum — each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 11 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shamus. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ah, am, as, ha, hm, sh, and uh. For points, the strongest play is hm — worth 7 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Swap a single tile in shamus 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.
shamus 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 one sense for shamus. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
shamus is one of two six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing shamus unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are samshu and shamus, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from shamus 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 shamus produce 40 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 six-letter words, 3 five-letter words, 10 four-letter words, 14 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.