Hidden inside tontines sit tinstone and tontines, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 8 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 145 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
tinstone and tontines tie for the highest Scrabble score from tontines at 8 points. The top 10 of 145 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 eight-letter words hiding in tontines: one comes from rearranging its letters, and tontines itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are tinstone and tontines, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in tontines produces 6 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with tension. For points, 6 words tie at 7 points, including tension, intents and intones.
Unscrambling tontines turns up 14 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with tennis. For points, 14 words tie at 6 points, including tennis, intent and intone.
There are 31 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tontines. If a familiar word is all you need, start with nines, noise and notes. For points, 31 words tie at 5 points, including nines, noise and notes.
Rearranging the letters in tontines produces 43 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with into, nest and nets. For points, 43 words tie at 4 points, including into, nest and nets.
Unscrambling tontines turns up 32 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with its, net and not. For points, 32 words tie at 3 points, including its, net and not.
There are 17 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tontines. If a familiar word is all you need, start with in, is and it. For points, 17 words tie at 2 points, including in, is and it.
4 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in tontines plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in tontines and you get a different eight-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 7 of the 8 letters, not all of them.
tontines 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 tontines. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 8 points on a Scrabble board:
tontines is one of two eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing tontines unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are tinstone and tontines, worth 8 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from tontines 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 tontines produce 145 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 eight-letter words, 6 seven-letter words, 14 six-letter words, 31 five-letter words, 43 four-letter words, 32 three-letter words and 17 two-letter words.