Hidden inside sidebars sit seabirds and sidebars, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 282 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
seabirds and sidebars tie for the highest Scrabble score from sidebars at 11 points. The top 10 of 282 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 eight-letter words hiding in sidebars: one comes from rearranging its letters, and sidebars 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 seabirds and sidebars, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in sidebars produces 11 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are abiders, biassed, braised and 6 more, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling sidebars turns up 38 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with beards, breads and brides. For points, 16 words tie at 9 points, including beards, breads and brides.
There are 78 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sidebars. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aired, aside and based. For points, 22 words tie at 8 points, including based, beard and birds.
Rearranging the letters in sidebars produces 84 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aids, airs and bade. For points, 17 words tie at 7 points, including bade, beds and bids.
Unscrambling sidebars turns up 51 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ads, aid and air. For points, 6 words tie at 6 points, including bad, bed and bid.
There are 18 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sidebars. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, as and be. For points, the strongest plays are ab, ba, be, and bi — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
2 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in sidebars plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in sidebars 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.
sidebars 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 two senses for sidebars. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
sidebars is one of two eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing sidebars unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are seabirds and sidebars, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from sidebars 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 sidebars produce 282 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 eight-letter words, 11 seven-letter words, 38 six-letter words, 78 five-letter words, 84 four-letter words, 51 three-letter words and 18 two-letter words.