Hidden inside alter sit alert, alter, artel and 3 others, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 5 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 48 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
alert, alter, artel and 4 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from alter at 5 points. The top 10 of 48 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 6 five-letter words hiding in alter: five come from rearranging its letters, and alter itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with alert, alter, and later. For points, the strongest plays are alert, alter, artel, later, ratel, and taler — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in alter produces 12 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with late, rate, real, tale, and tear. For points, the strongest plays are earl, late, lear, rale, rate, real, tael, tale, tare, teal, tear, and tela — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling alter turns up 19 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with are, art, ate, ear, eat, era, and let. For points, the strongest plays are ale, alt, are, art, ate, ear, eat, era, eta, lar, lat, lea, let, rat, ret, tae, tar, tea, and tel — each worth 3 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 11 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in alter. If a familiar word is all you need, start with at. For points, the strongest plays are ae, al, ar, at, el, er, et, la, re, ta, and te — each worth 2 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
43 six-letter words can be made using all the letters in alter plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in alter and you get a different five-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 4 of the 5 letters, not all of them.
alter 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 five senses for alter. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 5 points on a Scrabble board:
alter is one of six five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing alter unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are alert, alter, artel, later, ratel, and taler, worth 5 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from alter 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 alter produce 48 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 6 five-letter words, 12 four-letter words, 19 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.