Hidden inside steerage sit eagerest, etageres, and steerage, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 194 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
eagerest, etageres, and steerage tie for the highest Scrabble score from steerage at 9 points. The top 10 of 194 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 eight-letter words hiding in steerage: two come from rearranging its letters, and steerage 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 eagerest, etageres, and steerage, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in steerage produces 3 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 ergates, etagere, and restage, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling steerage turns up 22 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with agrees, easter, grease, and greets. For points, 16 words tie at 7 points, including agrees, grease and greets.
There are 51 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in steerage. If a familiar word is all you need, start with agree, erase and gates. For points, 28 words tie at 6 points, including agree, gates and geese.
Rearranging the letters in steerage produces 60 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ages, arts and ears. For points, 25 words tie at 5 points, including ages, gate and gets.
Unscrambling steerage turns up 44 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with age, are and art. For points, 15 words tie at 4 points, including age, gas and gee.
9 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in steerage plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in steerage 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.
steerage 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 steerage. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
steerage is one of three eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing steerage unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are eagerest, etageres, and steerage, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from steerage 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 steerage produce 194 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 eight-letter words, 3 seven-letter words, 22 six-letter words, 51 five-letter words, 60 four-letter words, 44 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.