OW
Worth 5 points before any premium square, and the 12th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 21 others.
OW extends into 18 three-letter words, which is the 4th most extendable of 96 — tied with 3 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→BOW
- C→COW
- D→DOW
- H→HOW
- J→JOW
- L→LOW
- M→MOW
- N→NOW
- P→POW
- R→ROW
- S→SOW
- T→TOW
- V→VOW
- W→WOW
- Y→YOW
- E→OWE
- L→OWL
- N→OWN
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 18 hides. OW hooks on 16 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 J, at 7%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 5.52% of the time you hold the letters for OW 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
OW backwards is WO, 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.