How to memorise every 2-letter Scrabble word in a week
A day-by-day plan for learning all 107 two-letter words. Twenty minutes a day and you'll never miss a parallel play again.
The two-letter list is the single highest-value thing to memorise in Scrabble. Two-letter words let you play parallel — dropping a tile alongside an existing word and forming a new two-letter word at every touching square. One parallel play can score 30 or 40 points from what looks like a dead corner of the board.
There are 107 valid two-letter words in the TWL and about 127 in SOWPODS. That sounds like a lot. It isn't — it's roughly one 20-minute study session a day for a week.
The plan
Day 1 — the obvious ones (33 words)
You already know these; the point of day one is to notice that you know them.
AH, AM, AN, AS, AT, AX, AY, BE, BI, BY, DO, GO, HA, HE, HI, HO, IF, IN, IS, IT, ME, MY, NO, OF, OH, ON, OR, OX, PI, SO, TO, UP, US, WE.
Day 2 — the vowel-heavy ones (18 words)
Any two-letter combo that's mostly vowels. Perfect for dumping tiles when your rack is drowning in As, Es, and Os.
AA, AE, AI, AW, EA, EE, EF, EL, EM, EN, ES, ET, EX, IO, OE, OI, OU, YE.
Day 3 — the consonant-heavy ones (11 words)
These are your escape valves when the board has an unexpected vowel to build off.
HM, MM, SH, ST, WO, XI, XU, YA, YO, ZA.
Day 4 — the Q, X, and Z words
The high-value scoring plays. Memorise these and you'll always have a bailout when you draw the big three.
QI, XI, XU, ZA (WWF-approved), plus check ZO in SOWPODS.
Day 5 — the 'wait, that's a word?' list
These trip everyone up the first time. Say each one out loud — it helps.
AB, AD, AG, AL, AR, ED, EF, ER, ES, ET, FA, ID, JO, KA, KI, LA, LI, MI, MO, MU, NA, NE, NU, OB, OD, OM, OP, OS, OW, OY, PA, PE, RE, SI, TA, TI, UH, UM, UN, UT, WA.
Day 6 — review with flashcards
Write each word on one side of an index card and a rough meaning on the other. Shuffle. Go through the deck twice. Any word you hesitate on goes into a smaller 'trouble' deck for one more pass.
Day 7 — put them to work
Play three games — online, against a friend, or against a solo Scrabble app — and consciously look for parallel plays every turn. The first game you'll miss most of them. By the third game you'll be spotting them without thinking.
The parallel-play trick
Here's why this list matters. Suppose the word BREAD is on the board. You can play the word AS below it so that A touches B and S touches R:
B R E A D A S
Every letter of your new word forms a second word with the letter above it. Miss one two-letter combo and the play is illegal. Know them all and the whole board opens up.
One trick with our unscrambler
Set the length filter to 2 and type all 26 letters of the alphabet. You'll get a printable reference sheet of every two-letter word in our dictionary. Tape it above your desk for a week and you'll never need it again.