arithmetic - Highest scoring words based on distance travelled along the alphabet

For any word we define it's alphabetic distance to be the total amount of places in the alphabet you need to traverse between each letter.

Example: WORD has a score of 25

• 8 character distance between W and O


• 3 character distance between O and R


• 14 character distance between R and D

which totals to 25.

This puzzle is to find the highest scoring English words (at least according to https://www.merriam-webster.com/) for a word of length N where N = 3, 4, 5, 6 (or more if you're brave enough)

For the N = 2 case its easy to see that ZA is the optimal solution. My best quick attempt for N = 3 is AYE:

• 2: ZA 25 points


• 3: AYE 44 points


• 4: ?


• 5: ?


• 6: ?

Good luck!

Answer

Slightly higher score for

N=5

ZAYAT, 92 points

N=6

SAWBWA, 104 points