Hidden inside tallies sit tailles and tallies, seven-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 7 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 157 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble SLATELI, TASILLE or LIESALT and you get the same 7 letters as TALLIES: so the words from TALLIES listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
tailles and tallies tie for the highest Scrabble score from tallies at 7 points. The top 10 of 157 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 seven-letter words hiding in tallies: one comes from rearranging its letters, and tallies itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are tailles and tallies, each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling tallies turns up 10 six-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are allies, illest, listel and 7 more, each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
There are 28 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tallies. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aisle, least and stall. For points, 28 words tie at 5 points, including aisle, least and stall.
Rearranging the letters in tallies produces 61 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with east, eats and last. For points, 61 words tie at 4 points, including east, eats and last.
Unscrambling tallies turns up 40 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with all, ate and eat. For points, 40 words tie at 3 points, including all, ate and eat.
There are 16 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tallies. If a familiar word is all you need, start with as, at, is, and it. For points, 16 words tie at 2 points, including as, at and is.
15 eight-letter words can be made using all the letters in tallies plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in tallies and you get a different seven-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 6 of the 7 letters, not all of them.
tallies 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 seven senses for tallies. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 7 points on a Scrabble board:
tallies is one of two seven-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing tallies unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are tailles and tallies, worth 7 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from tallies 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 tallies produce 157 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 seven-letter words, 10 six-letter words, 28 five-letter words, 61 four-letter words, 40 three-letter words and 16 two-letter words.