NA
Worth 2 points before any premium square, and the lowest-scoring of the 96 — tied with 35 others.
NA extends into 10 three-letter words, which is the 45th most extendable of 96 — tied with 8 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→ANA
- B→NAB
- E→NAE
- G→NAG
- H→NAH
- M→NAM
- N→NAN
- P→NAP
- W→NAW
- Y→NAY
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 10 hides. NA hooks on 10 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 Y, at 14%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 16.33% of the time you hold the letters for NA 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.
It reverses
NA backwards is AN, 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.