Hidden inside inmates sit etamins, inmates, and tameins, seven-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 235 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble MENASIT, MANSITE or STIAMEN and you get the same 7 letters as INMATES: so the words from INMATES listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
etamins, inmates, and tameins tie for the highest Scrabble score from inmates at 9 points. The top 10 of 235 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 seven-letter words hiding in inmates: two come from rearranging its letters, and inmates 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 etamins, inmates, and tameins, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling inmates turns up 21 six-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are aments, amines, animes and 14 more, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
There are 59 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in inmates. If a familiar word is all you need, start with items, mates and means. For points, 37 words tie at 7 points, including items, mates and means.
Rearranging the letters in inmates produces 79 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aims, amen and ants. For points, 40 words tie at 6 points, including aims, amen and item.
Unscrambling inmates turns up 51 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aim, ant and ate. For points, 16 words tie at 5 points, including aim, man and men.
There are 22 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in inmates. If a familiar word is all you need, start with am, an and as. For points, 5 words tie at 4 points, including am, me and em.
31 eight-letter words can be made using all the letters in inmates plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in inmates 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.
inmates 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 three senses for inmates. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
inmates is one of three seven-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing inmates unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are etamins, inmates, and tameins, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from inmates 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 inmates produce 235 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 seven-letter words, 21 six-letter words, 59 five-letter words, 79 four-letter words, 51 three-letter words and 22 two-letter words.