Because of the way games like Scrabble work, it is common for new words to be built up from other shorter words, like "REEQUIP" is an extension of "QUIP." Most commonly, an existing word gets extended by just a single letter, like "AGLEE" is "GLEE" plus the single letter "A". So it becomes very useful to learn playable words that are one-letter extensions of other playable words.
Some words even represent extensions from both ends, like how "EYEN" is both "EYE" extended by "N" and "YEN" extended by "E". We call such words "Janus" words because of their "two faces" quality. Janus words are particularly beneficial to memorize since they provide twice the usefulness for the effort.
There are exactly 984 4-letter Janus words playable under OWL2; the 50 most played are listed below in order of playrank. These words are extremely useful since they can help in memorizing both 3-letter and 4-letter words: if you know that "OBEY" is on this list, then you also know that both "OBE" and "BEY" are playable words. In a game, these words can provide that all-important opening for laying down a bingo word.
1. awee
2. zags
3. avow
4. anew
5. eyen
6. joes
7. feme
8. fado
9. zeds
10. abye
11. jute
12. obit
13. fane
14. awed
15. owed
16. howe
17. lowe
18. agee
19. fere
20. yowe
21. odah
22. away
23. jowl
24. open
25. fate
26. deft
27. reft
28. yare
29. vane
30. obey
31. alee
32. zins
33. foxy
34. dago
35. ayes
36. zits
37. dado
38. weel
39. node
40. robe
41. boxy
42. gore
43. agar
44. ahis
45. orad
46. feta
47. udon
48. twae
49. jays
50. mawn
This list is original research from ScrabbleGuru.com. Come visit us for more!