Hidden inside shanties sit anthesis, shanties, sheitans and 1 other, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 291 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
anthesis, shanties, sheitans and 6 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from shanties at 11 points. The top 10 of 291 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 4 eight-letter words hiding in shanties: three come from rearranging its letters, and shanties 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 anthesis, shanties, sheitans, and sthenias, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in shanties produces 15 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 ashiest, hastens, hessian and 6 more, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling shanties turns up 34 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with saints, sanest and shiest. For points, 17 words tie at 9 points, including shiest, shines and ashine.
There are 73 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shanties. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ashes, hates and heats. For points, 33 words tie at 8 points, including ashes, hates and heats.
Rearranging the letters in shanties produces 85 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ants, east and eats. For points, 37 words tie at 7 points, including hate, hats and heat.
Unscrambling shanties turns up 57 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ant, ash and ass. For points, 19 words tie at 6 points, including ash, has and hat.
There are 23 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in shanties. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ah, an and as. For points, 6 words tie at 5 points, including ah, eh and ha.
11 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in shanties plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in shanties 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.
shanties 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.
Both totals match, because every tile in shanties carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record two senses for shanties. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
shanties is one of four eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing shanties unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are anthesis, shanties, sheitans, and sthenias, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from shanties 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 shanties produce 291 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 4 eight-letter words, 15 seven-letter words, 34 six-letter words, 73 five-letter words, 85 four-letter words, 57 three-letter words and 23 two-letter words.