The Q is the most dependent letter in the tile bag. In the word list this site uses, 2,527 words contain a Q, and 2,506 of them also contain a U. Exactly twenty-one words let you play a Q with no U anywhere in sight, and they are all on this page. One honest note before the table: the word most players reach for first, QI, is not among them. It belongs to the official tournament lists. ENABLE has never contained it, so neither do our tools, and a list that pretended otherwise would get you challenged off a real board.
The complete list: 21 words
| Word | Tile score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| QAT | 12 | The leaves of the shrub Catha edulis, chewed as a stimulant |
| QAID | 14 | A Muslim military leader or commander |
| QATS | 13 | Plural of qat |
| QOPH | 18 | The nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet |
| FAQIR | 17 | A Muslim or Hindu holy man who lives by begging |
| QAIDS | 15 | Plural of qaid |
| QANAT | 14 | An underground channel built to carry water for irrigation |
| QOPHS | 19 | Plural of qoph |
| TRANQ | 14 | A tranquillizer (informal, shortened) |
| FAQIRS | 18 | Plural of faqir |
| QANATS | 15 | Plural of qanat |
| QINDAR | 16 | An Albanian coin, a hundredth part of a qintar |
| QINTAR | 15 | An Albanian coin worth 100 qindarka, equal to one lek |
| QWERTY | 21 | The standard keyboard layout, named from its first six letters |
| SHEQEL | 18 | The unit of money in Israel (a spelling of shekel) |
| TRANQS | 15 | Plural of tranq |
| QINDARS | 17 | Plural of qindar |
| QINTARS | 16 | Plural of qintar |
| QWERTYS | 22 | Plural of qwerty |
| QINDARKA | 22 | Plural of qindar |
| SHEQALIM | 22 | Plural of sheqel, in the Hebrew form |
Read structurally, the 21 are really ten words and their families. Ten stems (QAT, QAID, QOPH, FAQIR, QANAT, TRANQ, QINDAR, QINTAR, QWERTY, SHEQEL) and eleven plurals, nine of them made by adding S and two, QINDARKA and SHEQALIM, plural in the languages the words came from. Learn the ten stems and you own the whole list. The list is also weighted the way a stranded player would want: nine of the twenty-one are five letters or shorter, which is the size a rescue word needs to be.
Tournament lists differ. The official lists used in tournament Scrabble include more Q-without-U words than ENABLE does, among them QI: compare the NASPA Word List at scrabbleplayers.org and Collins' own guide to Q words at scrabble.collinsdictionary.com. The count of 21 on this page is ENABLE's, stated so it can be checked.
Where they came from
Almost none of these words grew up in English. They were imported by transliteration, spelled out letter by letter from other alphabets, and in those alphabets the deep K sound that English writes QU is written with a letter of its own, which transliteration renders as Q. Most of the 21 come from the Arabic and Persian world: QAT and QAID and FAQIR from Arabic, QANAT from the underground water channels of Persia and the Middle East. Others are Hebrew: QOPH, the nineteenth letter of its alphabet, and SHEQEL with its Hebrew plural SHEQALIM. The QINDAR and QINTAR family is Albanian money. And a few are home-grown: TRANQ, a clipped slang word for a tranquillizer, and QWERTY, which is not a borrowing at all but the name of the keyboard you are probably reading this on, taken from the first six letters of its top row.
That origin story is also the practical lesson. Because these words were never naturalised, English never gave them the U, and because they are few, a Q drawn without a U is a genuine emergency with a memorisable set of answers. The answers are QAT and QAID in most racks, QOPH if the letters fall kindly, and the board itself: a U already played is a hook, and QU words already on the board can sometimes be extended. Everything else on the table is a word you will play rarely and be disproportionately pleased about.
Playing the Q when no U comes
The order of operations is short. First, QAT or QAID: both are three and four letters, both use common partners, and QAT in particular should be checked against every rack, because A and T are among the commonest letters in the bag. Second, the hooks: scan the board for a played U you can sit the Q in front of, which turns the problem into an ordinary word-building exercise. Third, the exchange. A Q held too long is 10 points of dead weight and a rack slot that draws nothing, and on this list there is no QI waiting to save it. The Word Unscrambler will show you every word your exact rack can make from this same list, Q plays included, and the two-letter words page explains the wider list these questions keep touching.
Two racks, worked
Take a rack of Q, A, T, B, N, E, R. It makes 79 words from this list, and exactly two of them spend the Q: QAT (12 points) and TRANQ (14), which quietly uses five of the seven letters and leaves the rack balanced. Take a harder one: Q, O, P, H, D, A, E. Fifty-seven words are hiding in it, and only one spends the Q, but it is a good one: QOPH, 18 points. Miss it and the best plays are EPHOD and HOPED, and the Q goes back into the bag by exchange with nothing scored. Both racks were checked against the full list, and they show the shape of the problem honestly. The no-U exit is rarely the highest-scoring play on the rack. It is the play that stops the Q from taxing every turn after this one.
Questions
Is QI a word?
In the official Scrabble lists, yes: it is the life force in Chinese philosophy, and it is the most useful two-letter word in those games. In the ENABLE list this site uses, it has never appeared, and neither has its plural QIS. Our tools will not offer it to you, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Which list governs depends on where you are playing, and the questions on the two-letter words page explain how to tell.
What is the highest-scoring Q word without a U?
On raw tile values, three tie at 22: QWERTYS, QINDARKA and SHEQALIM, all of them plurals. Of the words you might realistically hold, QWERTY itself scores 21, QOPH 18, and the two short rescues score 12 (QAT) and 14 (QAID). Premium squares change all of this in play, as always.
Why do these words have a Q without a U at all?
Because they were not born in English spelling. They arrived by transliteration, written letter by letter from languages that use different alphabets (Arabic, Hebrew, Albanian), where the sound English writes as K or a hard throat sound is conventionally written Q. English then kept the Q and never added the U that native words like QUEEN and QUICK carry. QWERTY and TRANQ are the exceptions: home-grown coinages that never had a U to lose.
Should I hold a Q and wait for a U?
Usually not for long. A U is one tile among many, the Q scores nothing in your rack at the end, and this page exists precisely because the no-U exits are few and must be known by heart to be useful. The standard play is: look for QAT or QAID first, check whether a U is already on the board to hook into, and exchange the Q if neither appears within a turn or two. Exceptions exist (a QI on the official lists changes everything), but on this list, waiting is a leak.
Sources
- ENABLE word list (public domain): the 21 words are the complete result of scanning all 172,823 words in the list for a Q with no U: github.com/brokensandals/wordlists
- Princeton WordNet, for the meanings it carries (QAT, QOPH, FAQIR, QINTAR checked against it directly): wordnet.princeton.edu. The remaining meanings are short standard dictionary senses.
- Tile scores use the standard English tile-game values. The full checking method is on How We Verify. List computed 28 October 2026.
Update log
28 October 2026: published, with the list computed from the shipped word files so the page and the tools cannot drift apart.