Common Two-Letter Words: A Cheat Sheet
The short words worth memorizing before your next game.
This piece is a companion to our deeper dive on why two-letter words matter — here, the focus is purely practical: a grouped, quick-reference cheat sheet built for actually memorizing the list before your next game, rather than explaining the strategy behind it.
Group 1: the ones almost everyone already knows
OK, NO, GO, SO, IT, IS, AT, IN, ON, UP, TO, HE, WE, ME — this group needs no real memorization effort since most players already use these constantly in ordinary writing. They're listed here mainly as your foundation before moving to the less obvious groups below.
Group 2: A-words worth adding
AA (a type of rough lava), AI (a three-toed sloth), AL (an East Indian tree, also a valid short form), AM, AN, AS, AW, AX, AY — grouping these together as "the A-words" rather than trying to memorize the full alphabetical list in one pass tends to stick better, since your brain can hold a smaller themed cluster more easily than one long undifferentiated string.
Group 3: high-value short words
QI and XU are the two standout entries here — both carry real point value thanks to Q and X's high tile scores, and both are exactly the kind of word a strong player has ready that a casual one has never encountered. Worth memorizing specifically because they let you cash in otherwise-stuck high-value tiles in a short play.
Group 4: the O-words
OD, OE, OF, OH, OM, ON, OP, OR, OS, OW, OX, OY — a genuinely large cluster, worth its own dedicated memorization pass given how many O-initial two-letter words exist compared to most other letters.
Group 5: everything else
BY, DE, EF, EH, EL, EM, EN, ER, EW, EX, FA, HI, HM, ID, IF, JO, KA, KI, LA, LI, LO, MA, MI, MM, MU, MY, OI, PA, PE, PI, PO, SH, TA, UH, UM, UN, US, UT, WO, XI, YA, YE, YO, YU, ZA, ZO — round out the full set, though a small number of these sit right on the edge of what different games and tournament rule sets actually accept, so treat this outer tier as worth double-checking before relying on it competitively.
How to actually retain the list
Testing yourself against the full grouped list on our all-2-letter-words page a few times over several days, rather than one long single memorization session, tends to produce better retention — spaced repetition works for word-game vocabulary the same way it works for any other memorization task.
A caution on dictionary differences
Testing yourself without giving away the answer
A useful self-check once you've studied the groups above: pick a starting letter at random and try to write out every two-letter word you can recall for it before checking against the reference. This cold-recall approach exposes gaps a simple re-reading pass tends to hide, since recognizing a word on a list feels like knowing it even when you'd struggle to produce it unprompted mid-game. Repeating this a few times across different starting letters, spaced out over a few days rather than crammed into one sitting, is a more reliable way to build lasting recall than reading the full list start to finish once.
Turning the list into a quick pre-game warm-up
Players who play regularly often run through the full two-letter list mentally as a quick warm-up before a game, similar to how a musician runs scales before a performance — not because they've forgotten the words, but because active recall right before you need it keeps the list genuinely fast to access mid-game rather than something you technically know but hesitate over under time pressure. A 30-second mental run-through before your first move costs almost nothing and measurably reduces the odds of missing an obvious parallel-play opportunity in the opening turns, when the board is most open and those opportunities are most plentiful.
A note on how this list was compiled
The groupings above reflect broad, common word-game dictionary coverage rather than any single official source verbatim — they're organized for memorability (grouped by first letter) rather than by any other ordering scheme, and cross-checked against SnagWord's own ENABLE-based all-2-letter-words list, which you can browse directly for the full underlying data plus the exact tile-value breakdown for each entry in both games.
As with the Q-without-U set, a handful of the rarer two-letter words above are valid in some official word lists and not others — this cheat sheet reflects broad, common word-game dictionary coverage, but always confirm anything unusual against your specific tournament's or app's rules before relying on it in a competitive match.
One last practical tip: printing or screenshotting a grouped version of this list to keep genuinely close at hand during your first several games — taped near a physical board, or saved as a photo on your phone for a digital game — removes any friction between "I should check this" and actually checking it, which matters more for building the habit than any particular memorization technique does in the first few weeks of deliberate practice. Fade the crutch out gradually once recall starts feeling automatic, rather than leaning on it indefinitely — most players find that point arrives faster than they expect, usually within a handful of games.