handshake needs no unscrambling at all — the nine-letter word is already the strongest play its own letters allow, banking 20 points in Scrabble as it stands. In all, 164 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
handshake is the highest-scoring word from handshake, worth 20 points in Scrabble. The top 10 of 164 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
Only one nine-letter word uses the letters in handshake — and it is handshake itself. No unscrambling is needed: the word is already playable as written, worth 20 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling handshake produces exactly one eight-letter word: shadkhan. It is not one of the common answers — a genuine unscrambler find — and it banks 19 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in handshake produces 3 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring word is khedahs, worth 18 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling handshake turns up 10 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with shaken. For points, the strongest play is khedah — worth 17 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 36 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in handshake. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ahead, asked, hands, heads, naked, shake, and snake. For points, the strongest plays are dhaks and kheda — each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in handshake produces 54 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with desk, ends, haha, hand, head, hens, and sake. For points, the strongest play is dhak — worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling handshake turns up 41 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aah, ads, aha, and, ash, ask, and end. For points, the strongest plays are hah, heh, and shh — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 18 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in handshake. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, ah, an, as, eh, ha, and he. For points, the strongest play is ka — worth 6 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
1 ten-letter word can be made using all the letters in handshake plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in handshake 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.
handshake 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 one sense for handshake. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 20 points on a Scrabble board:
handshake is the only nine-letter word the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing handshake unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring play from these letters is handshake, worth 20 points in Scrabble, and no other word from handshake 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 handshake produce 164 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 1 nine-letter word, 1 eight-letter word, 3 seven-letter words, 10 six-letter words, 36 five-letter words, 54 four-letter words, 41 three-letter words and 18 two-letter words.