AM
Worth 4 points before any premium square, and the 34th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 18 others.
AM extends into 16 three-letter words, which is the 14th most extendable of 96 — tied with 1 other. 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
- B→BAM
- C→CAM
- D→DAM
- G→GAM
- H→HAM
- J→JAM
- L→LAM
- N→NAM
- P→PAM
- R→RAM
- T→TAM
- Y→YAM
- A→AMA
- I→AMI
- P→AMP
- U→AMU
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 16 hides. AM hooks on 15 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are A (49% of opening racks), I (49% of opening racks) and N (36% of opening racks). The rarest is J, at 7%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 6.06% of the time you hold the letters for AM 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
AM backwards is MA, 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.