OD
Worth 3 points before any premium square, and the 44th lowest-scoring of 96 — tied with 7 others.
OD 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
- B→BOD
- C→COD
- G→GOD
- H→HOD
- M→MOD
- N→NOD
- P→POD
- R→ROD
- S→SOD
- T→TOD
- Y→YOD
- D→ODD
- E→ODE
- S→ODS
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 14 hides. OD hooks on 13 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are E (60% of opening racks), N (36% 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, 10.47% of the time you hold the letters for OD outright, the 34th likeliest of 96 — tied with 4 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 17.07%, 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
OD backwards is DO, 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.