AB
Worth 4 points before any premium square, and the 34th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 18 others.
AB extends into 14 three-letter words, which is the 19th most extendable of 96 — tied with 10 others. That is the number worth memorising: a two-letter word is a place to put tiles, but a well-hooked one is a place to put them where the board stays open.
Every hook
- C→CAB
- D→DAB
- G→GAB
- J→JAB
- K→KAB
- L→LAB
- N→NAB
- S→SAB
- T→TAB
- W→WAB
- A→ABA
- O→ABO
- S→ABS
- Y→ABY
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 14 hides. AB hooks on 13 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are A (49% of opening racks), O (45% of opening racks) and N (36% of opening racks). The rarest is K, at 7%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 6.06% of the time you hold the letters for AB outright, the 44th least likely of 96 — tied with 15 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 12.69%, though spending one of the two blanks on a two-letter word is rarely the play. Exact hypergeometrics over the 100-tile bag, not a simulation.
It reverses
AB backwards is BA, which is also good. That is how most of this list is actually learned — 46 of the 96 come in reversible pairs, so knowing one gets you the other free.