All 107 Two-Letter Scrabble Words (And Why You Need to Know Every Single One)
If there is one piece of homework that will improve your Scrabble game faster than anything else, it is memorising the two-letter word list. Seasoned players treat these 107 words the way a musician treats scales — not glamorous, but completely foundational. Once you have them locked in, the board opens up in ways that are almost hard to explain until you experience it.
Why Two-Letter Words Matter So Much
Two-letter words are the engine of high-scoring Scrabble play for three reasons:
- Parallel plays. You can lay a word alongside an existing word, forming a column of two-letter words as you go. A single seven-letter parallel play can touch four or five two-letter combinations simultaneously, turning a modest rack into a 60+ point turn.
- Hooks. Adding a letter to the front or back of an existing word is called hooking. Two-letter words give you far more hooking targets. You can front-hook AA to make BAA, back-hook it to make AAH, or work it into a longer play entirely.
- Tight board situations. Late in the game, when the board is crowded, two-letter words let you squeeze tiles into gaps that would otherwise be dead space.
You can browse the complete two-letter word list directly at WordGamesHelper — 2-letter words, but let me also give you the full list right here, grouped by starting letter so it is easier to study in chunks.
The Full List, Grouped by Starting Letter
| Starting Letter | Words |
|---|---|
| A | AA, AB, AD, AE, AG, AH, AI, AL, AM, AN, AR, AS, AT, AW, AX, AY |
| B | BA, BE, BI, BO, BY |
| D | DA, DE, DO |
| E | ED, EF, EH, EL, EM, EN, ER, ES, ET, EW, EX |
| F | FA, FE |
| G | GI, GO |
| H | HA, HE, HI, HM, HO |
| I | ID, IF, IN, IS, IT |
| J | JO |
| K | KA, KI |
| L | LA, LI, LO |
| M | MA, ME, MI, MM, MO, MU, MY |
| N | NA, NE, NO, NU |
| O | OD, OE, OF, OH, OI, OK, OM, ON, OP, OR, OS, OW, OX, OY |
| P | PA, PE, PI, PO |
| Q | QI |
| R | RE |
| S | SH, SI, SO |
| T | TA, TE, TI, TO |
| U | UH, UM, UN, UP, US, UT |
| W | WE, WO |
| X | XI, XU |
| Y | YA, YE, YO |
| Z | ZA |
Note: The exact count can vary slightly by edition and year as dictionaries are updated. The list above reflects the TWL06/TWL2 tournament word list used in North American Scrabble.
Some Highlights Worth Knowing First
QI is your best friend. Q is the most feared tile in Scrabble (more on that in another post), but QI lets you dump it cleanly for 11+ points. It also hooks: you can play QIGONG if the stars align, but mostly you just need QI to survive a Q draw without a U.
ZA is slang for pizza and totally valid. ZA sitting on a double letter square for the Z scores you 22 points for two tiles. ZA is one of the most-played two-letter words at tournament level for exactly this reason.
XI and XU give the X tile a two-letter escape route. XI (the Greek letter) scores 19 points for two tiles. That alone should motivate memorising it.
AE, OE, AA look like typos but they are all valid. AE is a Scottish word for "one," OE is a whirlwind off the Faeroe Islands, and AA is a type of rough lava. Geography and Scottish dialect have been very good to Scrabble players.
How to Practise Them
Do not try to memorise all 107 at once. Instead:
- Learn the vowel-heavy two-letter words first (AA, AE, AI, OE) — these help most when you are drowning in vowels.
- Then learn the ones using high-value tiles (QI, ZA, XI, XU, EX, OX, AX) — these score points.
- Finally, fill in the rest alphabetically over a few weeks.
The best drill is simple: flip through the list before bed, cover one column and quiz yourself on the other. Within two weeks most players have them solid. The payoff in your actual games will be obvious almost immediately — you will start seeing three and four plays per turn where before you saw one.
A Note on Hooks
Once you know the two-letter words, your next study task is front and back hooks. For example, HE can become SHE (front hook) or HEP, HEX, HEM, HEN, HER, HES, HEW (back hooks). Every two-letter word in the list above has at least one hook, and several have dozens. That study pays double — you are learning three- and four-letter words at the same time.
The two-letter words are the foundation. Everything else in Scrabble strategy — bingos, parallel plays, board control — gets easier once these are automatic.