PI
Worth 4 points before any premium square, and the 34th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 18 others.
PI 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 PI makes a word.
- A→PIA
- C→PIC
- E→PIE
- G→PIG
- N→PIN
- P→PIP
- S→PIS
- T→PIT
- U→PIU
- X→PIX
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 10 hides. PI 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 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 PI 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.