Won't spoil it for the two hours or so remaining (at least here in the UK anyway), but upon finally finding the ten letter word, my reaction was precisely that  - er, WHAT?

I pride myself on having a better than average knowledge of Classical Greek, but this one made me wonder who else is going to uncover this one, especially if they don't possess my educational benefits.

When the puzzle closes, I suspect several here may have something to say about this one ...

This personal account may, of course, differ from the experience of others her, but I thought I'd share this nonetheless.

If I find the "big word" quickly, this frees up my thoughts to track down the lesser words. If, on the other hand, it takes me time to find the "big word",  this becomes an annoying mental roadblock, stopping me on occasions from seeing even obvious lesser words, until that annoyance disappears.

Once the roadblock is cleared, however, progress is rapid, until I hit my vocabulary limit of course.

Anyone else experience this phenomenon, or is it unique to me?

Thought I'd share some statistics. These are for the Monday 12th December puzzles ...

[1] Standard. 17 words found (all common).

From the words I found, growing was found by a whopping 603 players (largest number), while gong was found by 405 players (smallest number).

[2] Challenge. Total words found: 38 (all common).

Among the words I found, bound and down tied for top choice (335 players), while in last place was subtend with a mere 48 players finding this.

[3] 10-Letter:  Total words found: 32 (all common).

From the words I found, crop was found by 285 players (largest number), while corrode was found by 122 players (smallest number).

Wonder what stats others have for this day?

Without giving too much away about the 2022/03/26 10-letter puzzle, I entered a word, only to find it was rejected as not existing in the list. However, adding an extra letter produced a word that did exist in the list. Once the puzzle is closed, will someone please remind me to fill in the details? Don't want to spoil everyone's entertainment, do I?

I'm puzzled as to why my first word above doesn't exist in the list, and I suspect once it's safe to reveal that word, several others here will also share my puzzlement

Those who alighted upon the all letter word in today's puzzle will probably react as I did when they find it ... seriously, THIS was the choice of the all letter word today? 

I'm surprised that I forgot to mention this little highlight from an otherwise dismal 2021, as I posted about this in a dozen other places, but now is as good a time to remedy the deficit, so to speak ...

8th October, 2021 ... my colleague and I set off to perform moth trapping in a local woodland, and as it was the season for a certain target species to appear, we were hoping to find an example thereof.

Now, bear in mind that this species has been subject to a search spanning a total of, wait for it, thirty one years on our part, and every year throughout that period, we've drawn a blank.

The species in question is the Merveille Du Jour, though why a British moth acquired a French popular name is a question I've yet to see answered. But I digress. This moth is a strikingly beautiful species, once seen, never forgotten. But, for 31 years, my colleague and I have searched for it in vain.

So, we set out on the 8th of October. After the trap was set up and running, a couple of lads from the angling fraternity stopped by, and while my colleague engaged them in conversation, I continued the scan for movement around the foliage.

I see some movement in front of me, then notice in the periphery of my right field of vision, something that looked far more interesting than the first sighting. I head for the interesting looking specimen, capture it in the transparent tub, secure the lid, and look at it.

Upon seeing the specimen, I turn to my colleague and immediately exclaim:

"PAUL! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"

The look on his face was priceless.

The two lads were suitably impressed, when they saw [1] how beautiful this moth was, and [2] learned that we'd spent 31 years looking for it!

Pics will follow when I fire up the laptop. Needless to say, I took a LOT of photos of that specimen!

Today is the first day I've managed to rack up 30 words in the 7 by many puzzle!

Usually I struggle to reach 10 ...

Several of the puzzles here have had an interesting phenomenon associated therewith.

Namely, if you find, say, a five letter word from the puzzle letters, the remaining letters are found to form at least one four letter word, and combining the two resulting words into one results in a nonsense nine letter word that you wish was a real word.

One recent example from two days ago, was insertion, which gave iron and stein, which when combined, might be a suitable word for a Bavarian lager tankard made of metal.

Wonder if anyone else here has been taking note of instances thereof?