Crossplay Two-Letter Words

The full two-letter word list with point values - the highest-leverage vocabulary in the game. Use it with the board solver to see which hooks actually produce the top-scoring play.

Why two-letter words win games

Two-letter words are what let you play parallel to existing words — stacking a word right alongside another and scoring every cross-word it forms. Players who know them find placements everyone else misses. Here are the 96 two-letter words in this solver's tournament-style dictionary, with each word's base point value in parentheses.

A — AA (2) AB (5) AD (3) AE (2) AG (5) AH (4) AI (2) AL (3) AM (4) AN (2) AR (2) AS (2) AT (2) AW (6) AX (9) AY (5)

B — BA (5) BE (5) BI (5) BO (5) BY (8)

D — DE (3) DO (3)

E — ED (3) EF (5) EH (4) EL (3) EM (4) EN (2) ER (2) ES (2) ET (2) EX (9)

F — FA (5)

G — GO (5)

H — HA (4) HE (4) HI (4) HM (6) HO (4)

I — ID (3) IF (5) IN (2) IS (2) IT (2)

J — JO (11)

K — KA (7)

L — LA (3) LI (3) LO (3)

M — MA (4) ME (4) MI (4) MM (6) MO (4) MU (5) MY (7)

N — NA (2) NE (2) NO (2) NU (3)

O — OD (3) OE (2) OF (5) OH (4) OM (4) ON (2) OP (4) OR (2) OS (2) OW (6) OX (9) OY (5)

P — PA (4) PE (4) PI (4)

R — RE (2)

S — SH (4) SI (2) SO (2)

T — TA (2) TI (2) TO (2)

U — UH (5) UM (5) UN (3) UP (5) US (3) UT (3)

W — WE (6) WO (6)

X — XI (9) XU (10)

Y — YA (5) YE (5) YO (5)

Note: the NYT curates its own list from NWL23, so an entry here may occasionally be rejected in-game (and the NYT list evolves). Values shown are base values before bonus squares.

Twelve more two-letter words the NYT list accepts

Our solver's base dictionary is ENABLE-derived and predates several two-letter additions to the North American tournament list (NWL). The NYT curates Crossplay's dictionary from NWL23, so these twelve are playable in the game and have been added to the solver as of September 2026 — QI and ZA in particular are among the most valuable plays in the game:

DA (3) EW (6) FE (5) GI (5) JA (11) KI (7) OI (2) OK (7) PO (4) QI (11) TE (2) ZA (11)

One caution in the other direction: SI appears in the list above because it is in ENABLE, but it is not in NWL23 and the game will reject it. That brings the practical Crossplay two-letter list to 107 words.

How to actually use these

Don't memorize all of them at once. Start with the vowel-dumps (AA, AE, AI, OE, OI) for bad racks and the big-tile outlets (QI, ZA, JO, JA, XI, XU, AX, EX, OX). Then practice spotting parallel plays with the board solver: it will show you exactly which two-letter hooks make the top plays work.

Related

Crossplay Board Solver · Solve from a screenshot · How to play · Board layout · Tile values · Three-letter words · Q words without U · J, Q, X, Z words · Vowel dumps · Strategy tips