I played meerkat in yesterday's 10 letter puzzle and was surprised that it came up as rare.  I was also surprised to find that only about 15% of players found it.  Obviously it's a hard word to spot.  Nonetheless, I reckon pretty much everyone knows what a meerkat is, so I'd argue that it should be a common word.

Yes, I thought of it too, but dictionaries list it either as two words or hyphenated.

Given that covid (without capitals) is only 'occasionally seen', I think it should be classified as rare.

From the recent MUSHROOMED game - shroom is a term for those so-called 'magic mushrooms' (the hallucinogenic kind).  It's in several dictionaries.  Worth adding as a rare word in my view.

Racoon appeared as a common word in yesterday's 10 letter puzzle.  I got it this time after missing it in an earlier puzzle.  Dictionaries list it as a variant spelling of raccoon (which I presume is also common in Chi).  It seems odd to me that a variant spelling would be classified as common.  I've only ever seen it written as raccoon.  As a general principle, I think most variant spellings should be classified as rare.  Of course, there are no raccoons in my part of the world, so maybe racoon is a common variant elsewhere.     

Yes that's true, but it shouldn't alter the plurals rule.

Me too! 

From the recent HEREDITARY game: Rehire (common), rehired (rare).  I can't see why they should be classified differently.  Both common, I'd suggest.