Hidden inside tern sit rent and tern, four-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 4 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 12 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
rent and tern tie for the highest Scrabble score from tern at 4 points. The top 10 of 12 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 four-letter words hiding in tern: one comes from rearranging its letters, and tern itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with rent. For points, the strongest plays are rent and tern — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling tern turns up 4 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with net and ten. For points, the strongest plays are ern, net, ret, and ten — 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 6 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tern. No common everyday answer stands out among these two-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are en, er, et, ne, re, and te, 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 tern 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.
tern 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 one sense for tern. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 4 points on a Scrabble board:
tern is one of two four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing tern unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are rent and tern, worth 4 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from tern 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 tern produce 12 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 four-letter words, 4 three-letter words and 6 two-letter words.