Two-letter words are the secret sauce of competitive Scrabble. They let you hook a big word onto an existing tile, squeeze a play into a tight corner, and — most importantly — dump tiles without breaking up your rack’s bingo potential. Memorise the list below and your average turn score will quietly climb.
The complete list (TWL, 107 words)
Grouped by vowel for easy memorisation. Every entry is legal in tournament Scrabble under the Tournament Word List (TWL). Words With Friends accepts almost all of them plus a few extras (see below).
Starting or ending in A
AA, AB, AD, AE, AG, AH, AI, AL, AM, AN, AR, AS, AT, AW, AX, AY, BA, FA, HA, KA, LA, MA, NA, PA, YA, ZA
Starting or ending in E
BE, ED, EF, EH, EL, EM, EN, ER, ES, ET, EW, EX, FE, HE, ME, NE, OE, PE, RE, WE, XE, YE
Starting or ending in I
AI, BI, HI, KI, LI, MI, OI, PI, QI, SI, TI, XI
Starting or ending in O
BO, DO, GO, HO, JO, LO, MO, NO, OD, OE, OF, OH, OI, OM, ON, OP, OR, OS, OU, OW, OX, OY, SO, TO, WO, YO
Starting or ending in U
UH, UM, UN, UP, US, UT, MU, NU
Miscellaneous (no common vowel)
BY, MM, MY, SH, ST
The high-scoring ones
These eight are your secret weapons — each plays a tile worth ≥5 points on its own:
| Word | Meaning | Points |
|---|---|---|
| QI | Chinese life-force | 11 |
| ZA | Slang for pizza | 11 |
| XI | Greek letter | 9 |
| XU | Vietnamese monetary unit | 9 |
| JO | Scots for sweetheart | 9 |
| EX | The letter X | 9 |
| OX | Bovine | 9 |
| AX | Variant of AXE | 9 |
On a triple-letter square, QI or ZA (with the Q/Z triple-letter-scored) jumps to 31 points without any other tile involvement. Double-letter positions easily push them to 20+.
Why “useless” 2-letter words matter
Most 2-letter plays score under 10 points in isolation. So why memorise 100+ of them?
They enable parallel plays. Suppose the board shows RATE horizontally. Your rack holds AEILNRT — a strong bingo rack. Instead of burning tiles to extend RATE, you can play vertically alongside it, hooking tiny 2-letter words on each shared letter:
RATE
A
L I
E TEach vertical “word” (LA, IT, AT, LE, etc.) counts as a scored word on its own, multiplying your points on a 5-7 letter play. A well-placed parallel play regularly scores 40-60 points on top of the main word.
Words With Friends extras
WWF’s dictionary adds a handful of 2-letter words not accepted in Scrabble TWL, including OK, ZO, and DA. If you play both games, note which list you’re working from — our Scrabble Cheat uses TWL by default.
Q without U
Q is Scrabble’s most-feared tile — 10 points, one letter, and traditionally needs a U to be usable. But the TWL accepts several Q-words with no U at all, and QI is now the most common bailout play when you’re stuck:
- QI · QIS · QAT · QATS · QADI · QADIS · QOPH · QOPHS · QANAT · QANATS · QINDAR · QINTAR · QWERTY
Our dedicated Q-without-U guide has the complete list.
Drill them
The fastest way to learn the list is to play through it once, recognise what you already know, then spend 10 minutes a day on the rest until recall becomes automatic. Most players hit fluency in 2-3 weeks.