NO
Worth 2 points before any premium square, and the lowest-scoring of the 96 — tied with 35 others.
NO 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
No letter in front of NO makes a word.
- B→NOB
- D→NOD
- G→NOG
- H→NOH
- M→NOM
- O→NOO
- R→NOR
- S→NOS
- T→NOT
- W→NOW
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 10 hides. NO hooks on 10 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are O (45% of opening racks), R (36% of opening racks) and T (36% of opening racks). The rarest is W, at 14%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 14.90% of the time you hold the letters for NO outright, the 17th likeliest of 96 — tied with 3 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 21.81%, 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
NO backwards is ON, 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.