Every Two-Letter Word (and When to Actually Play Them)
The two-letter words are the load-bearing walls of Scrabble, Words With Friends and half the crossword grid. Here is the complete legal list, what the strange ones mean, and the parallel-play trick that turns them into forty-point turns.
Ask a tournament Scrabble player what to learn first and the answer is always the same: the twos. There are only around a hundred of them, they never change much, and they unlock the single most profitable move in tile games — the parallel play. They also rescue crossword corners, pad out Wordscapes levels, and settle more kitchen-table arguments than any other list in English.
The complete list
These are the two-letter words legal under the NASPA Word List used in North American tournament play (international Collins play adds a handful more). Grouped by first letter:
What the weird ones actually mean
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| QI | Life force in Chinese philosophy — the most-played Q word in Scrabble history |
| ZA | Slang for pizza; the Z rescue word |
| XU | A Vietnamese coin, one-hundredth of a dong |
| XI | The fourteenth Greek letter |
| JO | Scots for sweetheart |
| AA | Rough, jagged lava — Hawaiian, and a geologist's favourite opener |
| AE | Scots for one |
| OE | A whirlwind off the Faroe Islands |
| UT | The old name for the musical note do |
| KA | The spirit-double of a person in Egyptian mythology |
Every definition checks out in Merriam-Webster — worth bookmarking for the inevitable table dispute.
The parallel play: why the twos are worth points
The twos are not really about playing QI for eleven points on its own. They are about laying a word alongside an existing word so that every touching pair of tiles also spells something. Say MAP is already on the board. Play ADO directly beneath it and the columns spell MA, AD and PO — all legal twos — so your turn scores ADO plus all three little words at once. The craft is spotting a lane where every overlap is on the list, and you can only spot legal lanes if you know the twos cold.
A well-chosen parallel play routinely doubles or triples the face value of your tiles, which is why the pros call the two-letter list “the best return on memorisation in games”. For a colourful tour of how these tiny words behave in real racks, The Two-Letter Lifeboats is a fun companion read.
How to memorise them
- Learn by first letter. The A-group and O-group are half the battle; drill one group per day for a week.
- Learn the vowel-dumps as a unit. AA, AE, AI, OE, OI — they exist to unload bad racks, so file them together.
- Attach meanings to the strange ones. QI, ZA, XU and JO stick faster when they mean something (see the table above).
- Drill the hooks. Half the twos grow into common threes (AX → TAX/WAX/AXE); knowing which ones take an S is free points.
Frequently asked questions
Mostly identical, with edge cases: Words With Friends uses its own dictionary and has historically allowed a few words the NASPA list did not (and vice versa). If a two is rejected, do not panic — it is nearly always a dictionary difference, not your memory.
Yes — OK entered the official lists in 2018, along with EW. It remains slightly controversial with traditionalists, which makes playing it even more satisfying.
By raw tile value, QI and ZA (11 points each in Scrabble). On a premium square in a parallel play, either can top thirty points — which is why they are the two most feared little words on the board. For where the twos fit in the wider game, see our complete guide to word games.