Strategy
Every Two-Letter Scrabble Word Worth Knowing
The complete list of 101 two-letter words in the TWL06 Scrabble list, the extra ones Collins allows, the highest scorers, and how to use them to score more.
Published 5 min read
If you learn just one word list for Scrabble or Words With Friends, make it the two-letter words. They're short enough to memorise in an afternoon, and they make plays possible that you can't make without them: tucking a word alongside another, dumping an awkward J, or squeezing a Q onto a triple-letter square for more than thirty points.
Why two-letter words win games
Most big Scrabble scores don't come from long words. They come from placing a word parallel to one already on the board, so that every tile also forms a short word in the other direction. Each of those short words scores too.
Suppose PLAY is on the board and you hold O, X, E. Laying OX underneath PL forms OX across and two two-letter words down. If the X lands on a premium square, it counts in both directions. That's how a two-tile play can outscore a five-letter word. None of it works unless you know which two-letter combinations are allowed.
The complete TWL06 list (101 words)
These are all the two-letter words in the TWL06 list that powers the US/Canada setting in our Scrabble word finder:
| Starts with | Words |
|---|---|
| A | AA AB AD AE AG AH AI AL AM AN AR AS AT AW AX AY |
| B | BA BE BI BO BY |
| D | DE DO |
| E | ED EF EH EL EM EN ER ES ET EX |
| F | FA FE |
| G | GO |
| H | HA HE HI HM HO |
| I | ID IF IN IS IT |
| J | JO |
| K | KA KI |
| L | LA LI LO |
| M | MA ME MI MM MO MU MY |
| N | NA NE NO NU |
| O | OD OE OF OH OI OM ON OP OR OS OW OX OY |
| P | PA PE PI |
| Q | QI |
| R | RE |
| S | SH SI SO |
| T | TA TI TO |
| U | UH UM UN UP US UT |
| W | WE WO |
| X | XI XU |
| Y | YA YE YO |
| Z | ZA |
No two-letter word in TWL06 starts with C or V. Newer editions of the North American list have added a couple more (OK and EW arrived in 2018), so check which edition your club or app uses.
The ones that look wrong but aren't
Many valid two-letter words are unfamiliar because they're abbreviations of longer words, letters of other alphabets, musical notes or dialect words. A few worth knowing:
- AA: rough, cindery lava (a Hawaiian word).
- AI: a three-toed sloth.
- BO: a pal or friend.
- FE and PE: letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
- JO: a Scots word for a sweetheart.
- KA: the spiritual self in ancient Egyptian belief.
- KI and QI: the life force in Chinese philosophy.
- OD: a hypothetical force once thought to pervade nature.
- OE: a whirlwind off the Faroe Islands.
- XU: a former Vietnamese coin.
- ZA: slang for pizza.
Then there are letter names (AR, EF, EL, EM, EN, ES), Greek letters (MU, NU, PI, XI) and the sol-fa notes (DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI, plus UT, the old name for do).
The highest-scoring two-letter words
Scores below use standard Scrabble tile values, before premium squares:
| Word | Scrabble points |
|---|---|
| QI, ZA | 11 |
| JO, AX, EX, OX, XI, XU | 9 |
| BY, HM, MY | 7 |
| KA, KI, MM | 6 |
| AH, AW, AY, EF, EH, FA, FE, HA, HE, HI, HO, IF, OF, OH, OW, OY, SH, UH, WE, WO, YA, YE, YO | 5 |
The real value of QI, ZA and the X words is flexibility. An X on a triple-letter square with a vowel above and beside it can score 50 or more by forming two words at once (for example AX across and XI down).
Words without vowels
Three TWL06 two-letter words have no vowels: HM, MM and SH. They're lifesavers when your rack is all consonants. Collins adds CH and ST.
Extra words in Collins
Collins Scrabble Words, the list used in the UK and most international play, includes every TWL06 two-letter word plus these 23 (in the edition behind our UK setting):
CH, DA, DI, EA, EE, FY, GI, GU, IO, JA, KO, KY, NY, OB, OO, OU, PO, ST, TE, UG, UR, YU, ZO
Some are dialect (KY for cows, NY meaning near), some are interjections (OU, FY), and ZO, a Himalayan cattle hybrid, is another valuable Z play.
A note on Words With Friends
Words With Friends was originally built on the ENABLE word list, which lacks five of the TWL06 two-letter words: FE, KI, OI, QI and ZA. Zynga has edited its own dictionary many times since, so the in-app list differs from ENABLE. If in doubt, set the dictionary to Words With Friends in our WWF word finder or try the play in the game: unlike Scrabble, WWF rejects invalid words without penalty.
How to learn them quickly
- Learn by first letter. Group the list as in the table above and learn one row a day.
- Learn the "hooks". For each common letter, know which vowels it pairs with. X takes A, E, I, O, U in front or behind in some combination (AX, EX, OX, XI, XU).
- Focus on the surprising ones. You already know AT, IN, ON, TO. Spend your time on AA, AE, AI, OE, KI and friends.
- Play them. Using a word in a real game fixes it in memory far better than rereading a list.
Once the two-letter words are second nature, move on to the three-letter words. There are a little over a thousand in TWL06, and you can browse them on our three-letter words page.
The weekly word letter
Every Friday we send one strategy tip, a few high-scoring words to learn and links to our newest guides. It takes about five minutes to read.
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