XI
Worth 9 points before any premium square, and the highest-scoring of the 96 — tied with 5 others.
Hooks
1
An opening rack can play it
3.1%
Spending a blank
9.6%
XI extends into 1 three-letter word, which is the 4th least extendable of 96 — tied with 1 other. 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
In front — makes _XI
No letter in front of XI makes a word.
Behind — makes XI_
- S→XIS
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 3.11% of the time you hold the letters for XI outright, the 15th least likely of 96 — tied with 2 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 9.59%, 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.
Read the hook count as a floor. Hooks are counted against ENABLE’s 972 three-letter words. Both official lists carry more three-letter words than that, so a word’s real hook count at a rated game is this number or higher, never lower. How much higher is not quantified here, and this page will not guess at it.Which list this is. ENABLE, which is public domain — the reason it can be published here at all. Its 96 two-letter words are a strict subset of NWL2023’s 107; the 11 it does not carry are DA, EW, FE, GI, KI, OI, PO, QI, TE, ZA, OK. Collins adds 20 more again — the letters those add back are set out on the index page.