Hidden inside tamale sit malate, meatal, and tamale, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 8 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 61 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
malate, meatal, and tamale tie for the highest Scrabble score from tamale at 8 points. The top 10 of 61 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 six-letter words hiding in tamale: two come from rearranging its letters, and tamale itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are malate, meatal, and tamale, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 3 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tamale. If a familiar word is all you need, start with metal. For points, the strongest plays are metal and tamal — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in tamale produces 21 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with lame, late, male, mate, meal, meat, and melt. For points, the strongest plays are alma, alme, atma, lama, lame, male, malt, mate, meal, meat, melt, meta, tame, and team — each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling tamale turns up 21 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ate, eat, let, met, and tea. For points, the strongest plays are ama, elm, lam, mae, mat, mel, met, and tam — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 13 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tamale. If a familiar word is all you need, start with am, at, and me. For points, the strongest plays are am, em, ma, and me — each worth 4 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 tamale and you get a different six-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 5 of the 6 letters, not all of them.
tamale 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 two senses for tamale. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 8 points on a Scrabble board:
tamale is one of three six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing tamale unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are malate, meatal, and tamale, worth 8 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from tamale 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 tamale produce 61 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 six-letter words, 3 five-letter words, 21 four-letter words, 21 three-letter words and 13 two-letter words.