Two-letter words are the most useful words in Scrabble. And the most useful two-letter words are … all of them. There are 124 in total.
The ones that contain what we call the power tiles (J, Q, X and Z) are perhaps first among equals but there is really no substitute for knowing the lot.
Some of them are very common, like IN, AT and DO, while others will be familiar to you but you may not be used to thinking of them as words, such as AD (an advertisement), EX (an ex-partner or the letter X), or sounds like ER and HM. A good few, such as GU (a violin in the Shetlands), LI (a Chinese unit of distance) and ZO (a cross between a yak and a cow) will probably be completely unfamiliar to you. It will really help your game if you can learn as many as you can!
We’ve published a handy list of these for you to learn.
By Barry Grossman
Barry is a leading UK Scrabble player and winner of several tournaments. He is the author of Scrabble for Beginners (Chambers), Need to Know Scrabble, Scrabble – Play to Win and The Little Book of Scrabble Trickster. He has also contributed to numerous other books on the subject of words and word-games, has been a series champion of Channel 4’s Countdown, and has written four comedy series for BBC Radio 4. He lives in Hertford.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
