YE
Worth 5 points before any premium square, and the 12th highest-scoring of 96 — tied with 21 others.
YE extends into 16 three-letter words, which is the 14th most 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
- A→AYE
- B→BYE
- D→DYE
- E→EYE
- L→LYE
- P→PYE
- R→RYE
- T→TYE
- W→WYE
- A→YEA
- H→YEH
- N→YEN
- P→YEP
- S→YES
- T→YET
- W→YEW
Not all of them are equally reachable, which a bare count of 16 hides. YE hooks on 12 distinct letters, and the ones you are likeliest to be holding are E (60% of opening racks), A (49% of opening racks) and R (36% of opening racks). The rarest is H, at 14%.
How often you can actually play it
Out of an opening rack, 7.48% of the time you hold the letters for YE outright, the 44th likeliest of 96 — tied with 8 others. Counting a blank as whichever letter is missing lifts that to 15.19%, 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.