ours and sour tie for the highest Scrabble score from sour at 4 points. The top 9 of 9 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 four-letter words hiding in sour: one comes from rearranging its letters, and sour itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. Here the everyday answers and the top-scoring plays are one and the same: ours and sour, worth 4 points apiece in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling sour turns up 3 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with our. For points, the strongest plays are ors, our, and sou — each worth 3 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 4 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in sour. If a familiar word is all you need, start with or, so, and us. For points, the strongest plays are or, os, so, and us — each worth 2 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Swap a single tile in sour and you get a different four-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 3 of the 4 letters, not all of them.
sour 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 eleven senses for sour. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 4 points on a Scrabble board:
sour is one of two four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing sour unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are ours and sour, worth 4 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from sour 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 sour produce 9 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 four-letter words, 3 three-letter words and 4 two-letter words.