Hi Jan, I really appreciate your linq gems! This one pointed me to another solution that, I hope, you and your blog readers could like. It is similar to the value tuple you mentioned:

Using the new keyword to create an anonymous type in a let clause:

var query =
      from word in testWords
      let entry = new
      {
          word,
          usage = wordUsage.TryGetValue(word, out var u) ? u : 0,
      }
      orderby entry.usage
      select (entry.word, entry.usage);

Or maybe you can directly do:

//[...]
select entry;

to use the whole anonymous object as a result.