Hidden inside sideburns sit burnsides and sideburns, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 365 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
burnsides and sideburns tie for the highest Scrabble score from sideburns at 12 points. The top 10 of 365 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in sideburns: one comes from rearranging its letters, and sideburns itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these nine-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are burnsides and sideburns, each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
There are 8 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sideburns. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are burnside, disburse, sideburn and 2 more, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in sideburns produces 21 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with sunrise. For points, 10 words tie at 10 points, including beduins, binders and bruised.
Unscrambling sideburns turns up 64 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with brides, buried and buries. For points, 20 words tie at 9 points, including brides, buried and burned.
There are 88 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sideburns. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bends, binds and birds. For points, 15 words tie at 8 points, including bends, binds and birds.
Rearranging the letters in sideburns produces 105 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with beds, bend and bids. For points, 16 words tie at 7 points, including beds, bend and bids.
Unscrambling sideburns turns up 61 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bed, bid and bud. For points, 6 words tie at 6 points, including bed, bid and bud.
There are 16 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sideburns. If a familiar word is all you need, start with be, id and in. For points, the strongest plays are be and bi — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
2 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in sideburns plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in sideburns and you get a different nine-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 8 of the 9 letters, not all of them.
sideburns 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 3-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
sideburns is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing sideburns unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are burnsides and sideburns, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from sideburns 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 sideburns produce 365 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 8 eight-letter words, 21 seven-letter words, 64 six-letter words, 88 five-letter words, 105 four-letter words, 61 three-letter words and 16 two-letter words.