AW
Worth 5 points before any premium square, and the 12th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 21 others.
AW extends into 18 three-letter words, which is the 4th most extendable of 96 — tied with 3 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→CAW
- D→DAW
- H→HAW
- J→JAW
- L→LAW
- M→MAW
- N→NAW
- P→PAW
- R→RAW
- S→SAW
- T→TAW
- V→VAW
- W→WAW
- Y→YAW
- A→AWA
- E→AWE
- L→AWL
- N→AWN
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 18 hides. AW hooks on 16 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are E (60% of opening racks), A (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 AW 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.