INTRO PUZZLE

Odd-numbered teams were given the letters AEIOUYS.
Even-numbered teams were given the letters NTHRLDG.

These sets was carefully chosen to make it hard for any team to score well without trading, but fairly easy once they did.

With no trades, the best words that either set can spell are YOUSE(8) and NTH(6). After two trades, each team can spell approximately 60 7-letter words each and about 400 after three trades.

A good strategy to approach this challenge:

a) find out what letters are out there
b) find some target words that use high-scoring letters (Y, H, D, and G)
c) aim for words that don't use the most frequent letters (A, E, S)
d) trade away those frequent letters for the letters you want

Here are some of the best possible words:

67: heydays holyday haughty heydeys
66: healthy harshly ethynyl
65: hydatid athodyd haggish hydride hydroid hydrids highted thighed doughty hoggish
64: hardhat halyard haylage aarrghh hayseed hothead headily hayride hydriae deathly hydrase hydrate thready hadiths houdahs handily holiday hyaloid hyoidal hardily ladyish shadily unhandy hydrant daylily sayyids dynasty hashing shaughs nylghai hayings grayish nylghau ghastly naughty gyrally honeyed shushed hyenoid dithery hoydens doyleys odyssey thirdly shindys thyroid hydrous drouthy hygiene greyhen eighths heights highest sheughs greyish hygeist lengthy thegnly teughly theurgy synergy hushing through thought lightly shingly nightly rightly sightly gushily tightly tything roughly ghostly sloughy toughly yoghurt lyingly

One team managed to come up with "ghostly".