Hidden inside shovel sit hovels and shovel, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 54 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
hovels and shovel tie for the highest Scrabble score from shovel at 12 points. The top 10 of 54 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 six-letter words hiding in shovel: one comes from rearranging its letters, and shovel itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with shovel. For points, the strongest plays are hovels and shovel — each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 9 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shovel. If a familiar word is all you need, start with holes, loves, shove, and solve. For points, the strongest plays are hovel and shove — each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in shovel produces 16 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with hole, hose, lose, love, and shoe. For points, the strongest play is hove — worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling shovel turns up 16 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with she. For points, the strongest plays are hes, hoe, hos, lev, ohs, sev, she, sho, soh, and voe — each worth 6 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 shovel. If a familiar word is all you need, start with eh, he, ho, oh, sh, and so. For points, the strongest plays are eh, he, ho, oh, and sh — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
1 seven-letter word can be made using all the letters in shovel plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in shovel 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.
shovel 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 five senses for shovel. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 12 points on a Scrabble board:
shovel is one of two six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing shovel unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are hovels and shovel, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from shovel 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 shovel produce 54 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 six-letter words, 9 five-letter words, 16 four-letter words, 16 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.