Fun 3-Letter Words

Here are some interesting things I've noticed while going over all the 3 letter words.

1) BaFFled by a rack with two Fs? We all know the word OFF. But did you know that AFF, EFF, and IFF are also good? That means all the vowels except U take the FF. If one of the Fs land on a TLS, then that's at least a 16 points for dumping your two Fs. Even better though is hooking the F on either an EF, IF, and, of course, OF.

2) When learning the A 3 letter words, one runs into the symetrically interesting words, AVA and AWA. During this year's televised Scrabble championship after Trey Wright put down AWA on a TWS, the commentator, Stefan Fatsis, noted that AWA was a very important word in Scrabble. I'll take his word for it.

Not only are AVA and AWA are good but if you flip-flop the letters, you get two more good three letter words: VAV and WAW. Those are especially good for dumping bad letters off your rack.

3) I've already mentioned a memory device that I use to remember the front hooks for AE: MIKE WAUGH STINKS (all the consonants go in front of AE to form valid words). Furthermore, I learned from Everything Scrabble that all of these words that start with single point letters (SAE, TAE, and NAE) do not take an S at the end, while all of the others do (MAES, KAES, WAES, GAES, and HAES).