Hidden inside travel sit travel and varlet, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 73 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
travel and varlet tie for the highest Scrabble score from travel at 9 points. The top 10 of 73 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 six-letter words hiding in travel: one comes from rearranging its letters, and travel itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with travel. For points, the strongest plays are travel and varlet — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
There are 12 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in travel. If a familiar word is all you need, start with alert, alter, and later. For points, 6 words tie at 8 points, including avert, laver and ravel.
Rearranging the letters in travel produces 21 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with late, rate and real. For points, 9 words tie at 7 points, including veal, aver and lave.
Unscrambling travel turns up 27 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with are, art and ate. For points, 8 words tie at 6 points, including vet, ave and lav.
6 seven-letter words can be made using all the letters in travel plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in travel 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.
travel 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 nine senses for travel. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
travel is one of two six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing travel unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are travel and varlet, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from travel 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 travel produce 73 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 six-letter words, 12 five-letter words, 21 four-letter words, 27 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.