oat and tao tie for the highest Scrabble score from tao at 3 points. The top 5 of 5 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 three-letter words hiding in tao: one comes from rearranging its letters, and tao itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these three-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are oat and tao, each worth 3 points in Scrabble.
33 four-letter words can be made using all the letters in tao plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in tao and you get a different three-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 2 of the 3 letters, not all of them.
tao 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 tao carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record two senses for tao. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 3 points on a Scrabble board:
tao is one of two three-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing tao unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are oat and tao, worth 3 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from tao 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 tao produce 5 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 three-letter words and 3 two-letter words.