How many two letter words are there?

96 in ENABLE, the word list Scrabble and Words With Friends programs validate against. This page lists them all where the list is short enough, and the most common of them where it is not.

Which one scores highest?

ex, at 9 points in Scrabble and 9 in Words With Friends. That is raw tile value: a bonus square can multiply it, and a seven-tile play adds fifty on top.

Which are worth learning first?

The ones you will actually get a chance to play: of, to, in, is, on, by, it, or. The list is ordered that way, most common first.

Two Letter Words

96 of them, all valid in ENABLE. The backbone of parallel plays, and the difference between a stuck rack and a 30-point turn.

Two-letter words do more work than their score suggests. They are how you play alongside an existing word instead of through it, turning one tile into three or four scoring words at once, and they are the escape route when your rack will not reach anything longer.

Most of them are ordinary English. The handful that are not—aa, xi, oe—are worth memorising precisely because opponents dispute them.

One caveat about this list in particular. ENABLE was frozen before the 2006 dictionary update, so qi and za—now two of the most-played words in tournament Scrabble—are missing from it and therefore from this page. Every word here is valid; the modern list is two words longer.

The words

All 96 of them, everyday words first.

Everyday words 87

Word-game words 9

What is in this list

Every entry here appears in ENABLE, so a word game will accept it. Scores are raw tile totals in Scrabble, with the Words With Friends score on hover—the two games value tiles differently, and the gap is largest exactly where it matters, on the high-value letters.

Words in total: 96
Everyday words: 87
Highest Scrabble score: ex at 9
Average Scrabble score: 3.8
Letters that turn up most: A 27%, O 25%, E 22%, I 15%, M 13%, H 10%

Questions

How many two letter words are there?: 96 in ENABLE, the word list Scrabble and Words With Friends programs validate against. This page lists them all where the list is short enough, and the most common of them where it is not.
Which one scores highest?: ex, at 9 points in Scrabble and 9 in Words With Friends. That is raw tile value: a bonus square can multiply it, and a seven-tile play adds fifty on top.
Which are worth learning first?: The ones you will actually get a chance to play: of, to, in, is, on, by, it, or. The list is ordered that way, most common first.

Search your own rack

Type the tiles you are holding, ? included for blanks, and the finder returns every word you can make from them—scored, everyday words first. It searches all 315,007 words in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere.