AR
Worth 2 points before any premium square, and the lowest-scoring of the 96 — tied with 35 others.
AR extends into 22 three-letter words, which is the most extendable of the 96. 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→BAR
- C→CAR
- E→EAR
- F→FAR
- G→GAR
- J→JAR
- L→LAR
- M→MAR
- O→OAR
- P→PAR
- T→TAR
- V→VAR
- W→WAR
- Y→YAR
- B→ARB
- C→ARC
- E→ARE
- F→ARF
- K→ARK
- M→ARM
- S→ARS
- T→ART
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 22 hides. AR hooks on 16 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are E (60% of opening racks), O (45% of opening racks) and T (36% of opening racks). The rarest is K, at 7%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 16.33% of the time you hold the letters for AR outright, the 9th likeliest of 96 — tied with 7 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 23.45%, 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.