I'm intrigued by your last comment, techno. Surely the way to kill off a thread is to not post to it? If other people continue to do so, all you need to do is ignore it: while others are still posting to it they've still got something to say.

Some house plans seem to call the "study" a "library" 

How pretentious is that, birdy! I use one of my bedrooms as a 'study'. There are a couple of bookshelves on the wall so if I ever put the house on the market, should I ask the estate agent (realtor?) to describe it as having an upstairs library?

By the way, another expression I've seen that I don't think has been mentioned here is 'great room'. Is that another name for 'family room'?

How nice to think that you can make friends through a forum such as this, with people on other continents, and then actually get to meet them.

I hadn't seen the photos before, r-m, so thanks for telling me about them. Techno or birdy, do either of you have any photos of your meetings to share with us?

I've started a new thread at your suggestion, Alan.

A quote from the thread that you ask us to read before posting new words: Try to avoid giving away any of the words in a current puzzle. Of yesterday's two threads suggesting new words, my (probably wrong!) view was that TRex's was perfectly OK (algol gave away nothing at all), gunshy was similarly not a problem, but husting had the potential to give away several words: hustling, lusting, using, sing, sting. I think part of the problem is that seeing the letters in an actual word reveals other words more easily than seeing them in the grid in a random pattern.

I doubt many people will agree with me but that's my two penn'orth! If in doubt, save it for the next day. How difficult can that be? Is it simply a case of spotting a word that you think should be included and wanting to suggest it before anyone else does?

OK, that's three penn'orth.

As much as that, techno? I'm impressed!

I didn't realize that 'family room' was another word (or two words) for den, TRex. For some reason I always thought that 'den' was another word for 'study'.

Fireworks, I'd been plaing the game for a couple of years before I found out, quite by accident, that you can type the letters in. 'Loller' or not, it's so much easier that way!

By the way, you must have very long arms if you can use the mouse while you've got your feet on your desk! Unless you have the mouse mat on your lap of course.

I usually go to the gym in the mornings and have to get up an hour and a half before I go so that I can have breakfast and let it settle before I exercise.  Consequently I have half an hour or so to play Chi before I go. Then, like Linda, I dip in and out during the day. These days I don't spend as much time on it as I used to and often end up missing 10-20 common words.

But, Fireworks, how can you possibly ignore the Challenge puzzle??!!! I like to switch between the two, swapping when I'm stuck on one puzzle. That way I often see words that I missed last time round.