HO
Worth 5 points before any premium square, and the 12th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 21 others.
HO 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
- M→MHO
- O→OHO
- R→RHO
- T→THO
- W→WHO
- B→HOB
- D→HOD
- E→HOE
- G→HOG
- N→HON
- P→HOP
- T→HOT
- W→HOW
- Y→HOY
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 14 hides. HO hooks on 12 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are E (60% of opening racks), O (45% of opening racks) and R (36% of opening racks). The rarest is Y, at 14%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 5.52% of the time you hold the letters for HO outright, the 27th least likely of 96 — tied with 10 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 11.75%, 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
HO backwards is OH, 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.