chiao needs no unscrambling at all — the five-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 10 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 20 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
chiao is the highest-scoring word from chiao, worth 10 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 20 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one five-letter word uses the letters in chiao — and it is chiao itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in chiao produces 5 valid four-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these four-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are chai, chao, and chia, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling chiao turns up 7 three-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these three-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are chi, hic, ich, and och, each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in chiao 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.
chiao 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.
Both totals match, because every tile in chiao carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
chiao is the only five-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing chiao unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is chiao, worth 10 points in Scrabble, and no other word from chiao 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 chiao produce 20 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 five-letter word, 5 four-letter words, 7 three-letter words and 7 two-letter words.