Alan, to formalise discussions in the "Always a moment I can't wait for..." thread, could you please review the status of busby, busbies and begrime with a view to making then rare.

For those interested, Alan has now posted the end-of-year player stats for 2023.

I'm happy to say that I managed to improve my rosette tally for the 12th consecutive year, as well as achieving my highest ever ranking (proof that while my body may be getting older and creakier, the old brain cells are still going strong!) 

Yesterday's 10 letter puzzle included the words hereof, hereon, hereto, hereunto, thereof, thereon, thereto and thereunto.  All of them were classed as common except hereon.  That seems anomalous to me.  If all the others are common, shouldn't hereon be common too?  I think it should.

1.  Some time ago I requested that orated be reclassified as a common word.  Alan had a different view and decided to make it rare, along with orate.  Since then, a few players have questioned that decision and I've found it problematic, especially considering that oration is common.  I'm not sure of the status of orator and oratory.  If they're both common, that would support the case for reclassifying orate and orated.  If they're not common, they probably should be.  So, Alan, I'm asking you to please reconsider the status of orate and orated.

2.  Also some time ago I suggested adding the words vape, vaped and vaping to the Chi lexicon.  Alan agreed and added them as rare words.  Since then, I think the words have become much more widely known.  I doubt there would be many people today who don't know what vaping is.  So, I'm requesting that vape, vaped and vaping be reclassified as common words.  (I'm not sure whether vaper was included in Alan's original judgement.  I'm not too fussed about its status.)

I tried bodhi (the state of enlightenment in Buddhism) unsuccessfully in the recent ********* game.  It's listed (without a capital B) in various dictionaries including Merriam-Webster, Collins and dictionary.com, as well as in numerous reference works on Buddhism and religion in general. 

(Edited by AW to remove key word spoiler)

The least played word in the recent PIONEERING game.  It's certainly not common to me.

My local newspaper publishes a nine letter puzzle each morning, which I do over my morning coffee before tackling Chi.  Unlike Chi, it doesn't differentiate between common and rare words, so some of the seed words are pretty obscure.  Some of the ones I've missed recently have been ISINGLASS, THRALLDOM and ANHYDROUS.  Can you imagine the outcry if any of these appeared as a seed word in Chi?

Mind you, we do occasionally get strange ones.  The oddest one I can recall was ANTIKNOCK which appeared some years ago.  Not surprisingly, it caused a good deal of consternation among players and was subsequently reclassified by Alan.