variance needs no unscrambling at all — the eight-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 13 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 139 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
variance is the highest-scoring word from variance, worth 13 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 139 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one eight-letter word uses the letters in variance — and it is variance itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 13 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in variance produces 4 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are avarice and caviare, each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling variance turns up 14 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with naiver. For points, 5 words tie at 11 points, including airvac, carven and cavern.
There are 34 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in variance. If a familiar word is all you need, start with carve, naive, and nicer. For points, 7 words tie at 10 points, including carve, caver and cavie.
Rearranging the letters in variance produces 43 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with area, care and cave. For points, the strongest plays are cava, cave, and vice — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling variance turns up 32 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with air, are and can. For points, the strongest play is vac — worth 8 points in Scrabble.
1 nine-letter word can be made using all the letters in variance plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in variance 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.
variance 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 3-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 variance. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 13 points on a Scrabble board:
variance is the only eight-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing variance unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is variance, worth 13 points in Scrabble, and no other word from variance 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 variance produce 139 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 eight-letter word, 4 seven-letter words, 14 six-letter words, 34 five-letter words, 43 four-letter words, 32 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.