tributary needs no unscrambling at all — the nine-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 14 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 101 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
tributary is the highest-scoring word from tributary, worth 14 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 101 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one nine-letter word uses the letters in tributary — and it is tributary itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 14 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling tributary produces exactly one seven-letter word: turbary. It is not one of the common answers — a genuine unscrambler find — and it banks 12 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling tributary turns up 6 six-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are bratty and briary, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
There are 17 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tributary. No common everyday answer stands out among these five-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are barry, batty, bitty and 2 more, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in tributary produces 27 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bait, brat and bury. For points, the strongest plays are bray, bury, and ruby — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling tributary turns up 36 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with air, art and bar. For points, the strongest plays are aby, bay, and buy — each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
There are 13 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in tributary. If a familiar word is all you need, start with at, ay, by, and it. For points, the strongest play is by — worth 7 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in tributary and you get a different nine-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 8 of the 9 letters, not all of them.
tributary 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 four senses for tributary. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 14 points on a Scrabble board:
tributary is the only nine-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing tributary unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is tributary, worth 14 points in Scrabble, and no other word from tributary 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 tributary produce 101 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 nine-letter word, 1 seven-letter word, 6 six-letter words, 17 five-letter words, 27 four-letter words, 36 three-letter words and 13 two-letter words.