AL
Worth 2 points before any premium square, and the lowest-scoring of the 96 — tied with 35 others.
AL extends into 13 three-letter words, which is the 30th most extendable of 96 — tied with 5 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
- A→AAL
- B→BAL
- D→DAL
- G→GAL
- P→PAL
- S→SAL
- A→ALA
- B→ALB
- E→ALE
- L→ALL
- P→ALP
- S→ALS
- T→ALT
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 13 hides. AL hooks on 9 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are E (60% of opening racks), A (49% of opening racks) and T (36% of opening racks). The rarest is P, at 14%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 11.48% of the time you hold the letters for AL outright, the 26th likeliest of 96 — tied with 7 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 18.38%, 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
AL backwards is LA, 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.