Hidden inside subsidies sit subsidies and subsidise, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 89 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
subsidies and subsidise tie for the highest Scrabble score from subsidies at 12 points. The top 10 of 89 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in subsidies: one comes from rearranging its letters, and subsidies 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 subsidies and subsidise, each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling subsidies produces exactly one eight-letter word: subsides. It is not one of the common answers — a genuine unscrambler find — and it banks 11 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in subsidies produces 2 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is subside, worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling subsidies turns up 13 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with issues. For points, the strongest plays are busied and bussed — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
There are 12 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in subsidies. If a familiar word is all you need, start with buses, issue, and sides. For points, the strongest plays are bides, bidis, and bused — each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in subsidies produces 27 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with beds, bids and buds. For points, 9 words tie at 7 points, including beds, bids and buds.
Unscrambling subsidies turns up 23 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 9 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in subsidies. If a familiar word is all you need, start with be, id, is, and us. For points, the strongest plays are be and bi — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
3 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in subsidies plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in subsidies 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.
subsidies 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 2-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record one sense for subsidies. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 12 points on a Scrabble board:
subsidies is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing subsidies unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are subsidies and subsidise, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from subsidies 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 subsidies produce 89 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 1 eight-letter word, 2 seven-letter words, 13 six-letter words, 12 five-letter words, 27 four-letter words, 23 three-letter words and 9 two-letter words.