Hidden inside shotguns sit gunshots and shotguns, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 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.
gunshots and shotguns tie for the highest Scrabble score from shotguns at 12 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 shotguns: one comes from rearranging its letters, and shotguns itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with shotguns. For points, the strongest plays are gunshots and shotguns — each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in shotguns produces 5 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with shotgun. For points, 5 words tie at 11 points, including shotgun, gunshot and hognuts.
Unscrambling shotguns turns up 15 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ghosts, shouts, and sought. For points, 9 words tie at 10 points, including ghosts, sought and hognut.
There are 36 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shotguns. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ghost, hosts and hunts. For points, 10 words tie at 9 points, including ghost, ought and tough.
Rearranging the letters in shotguns produces 58 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with gosh, guns and guts. For points, 11 words tie at 8 points, including gosh, hogs and hugs.
Unscrambling shotguns turns up 39 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with got, gun and gut. For points, the strongest plays are hog, hug, and ugh — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
There are 14 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shotguns. If a familiar word is all you need, start with go, ho and no. For points, the strongest plays are ho, oh, sh, and uh — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
3 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in shotguns plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in shotguns 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.
shotguns 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 2-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 shotguns. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 12 points on a Scrabble board:
shotguns is one of two eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing shotguns unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are gunshots and shotguns, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from shotguns 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 shotguns produce 169 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 eight-letter words, 5 seven-letter words, 15 six-letter words, 36 five-letter words, 58 four-letter words, 39 three-letter words and 14 two-letter words.