title-begins require exact matches. So, the following examples return completely different results.

title-begins:I
title-begins:I*      

The first example would return the book, "I Lied," but it would not return the book, "Isabel." The second example would return both books. This behavior also applies to:

The search engine automatically discards small words, such as "A" and "The." So, for example, if you created queries using either of the following key:value pairs. title-begins:A title-begins:The you would get zero results because the search engine discards those words when searching through titles. This behavior is also true for: