3 letter words with A and U

Our dictionary holds 15 3 letter words with a and u, all exactly 3 letters long. The highest-scoring of them is QUA, worth 12 points in Scrabble.

More of these words begin with A than any other letter — 7 of them, about 47% of the list.

3 appear in the 20,000 most common English words (20%), including eau, auf, tau; the remaining 12 are rarer finds that still count as valid plays.