MA
Worth 4 points before any premium square, and the 34th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 18 others.
MA 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→AMA
- C→MAC
- D→MAD
- E→MAE
- G→MAG
- N→MAN
- P→MAP
- R→MAR
- S→MAS
- T→MAT
- W→MAW
- X→MAX
- Y→MAY
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 13 hides. MA hooks on 13 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 X, at 7%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 6.06% of the time you hold the letters for MA 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
MA backwards is AM, 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.