Hidden inside later 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 later 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 later: five come from rearranging its letters, and later 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, 6 words tie at 5 points, including alert, alter and later.
Rearranging the letters in later produces 12 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with late, rate and real. For points, 12 words tie at 4 points, including late, rate and real.
Unscrambling later turns up 19 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with are, art and ate. For points, 19 words tie at 3 points, including are, art and ate.
43 six-letter words can be made using all the letters in later plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in later 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.
later 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 four senses for later. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 5 points on a Scrabble board:
later is one of six five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing later 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 later 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 later 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.