I looked in the archives, but didn't see this; if it's been raised before, I spologize.

The slangy epithet TARD is not allowed?  Really?

What a terrific and well-reasoned reply, as always, Alan.  Thanks so much for your patience and wit in dealing with all the newbie requests.  Coffee grounds!  Haw!

I don't think it would improve the game if we were to allow every conceivable derived form - it would probably make any puzzle with an E and an R a rather tedious affair of mechanically constructing words.

I especially agree with you here; I don't think adding an automatic -er and re- to every possible (but not probable) word would be fun.  I kind of like the challenge of trying to figure out in each case whether you really can be a [verb]er, or you can re[verb] a second time. 

In the regular puzzle: LAIT is accepted, though it's not found in the free dictionary the game provides, nor in dictionary.reference.com.  I suppose the game acceptance is due to its use from the French for milk, as in cafe au lait?  Mon dieu, that seems a slippery slope of foreign phrases to me.  I also was allowed to use DICT, which (as far as my very limited research reveals) seems to mean nothing at all.  (I nearly said the same thing about NEEP until I found it was an archaic Scottish word for a turnip.  How handy!)

Challenge puzzle: why can you REPIN (a flower) but not RECAN (preserves)?  I'm guessing that (if indeed there is some reasoning behind it) it's because canning implies some sort of permanent state?  There's a lot of these re- words, and I often wonder why some are allowed and some aren't.  In the same vein, you can be a PINER (after unrequited love) but not a PANER (of window glass)...

BTW, vagaries like this (and the ever-changing acceptable word list, thanks to Alan's indefatigable enthusiasm) make me wonder who the "every word, every day, at 100% hit rate" crowd think they're fooling....

I would definitely use an initial S to spell "soitanly."  (soitainly?  soitenly?)

As always, Alan, a terrifically thoughtful and well-researched reply.  Thank you for one of the nicest forums on the web.

Philip K. Dick is a touchy subject with me - I want to like him because he has such bizarre ideas, but his supposedly futuristic works are peppered with so many thoughtless, mundane things like carbon paper and tape and gas stations, it's hard to take his big ideas about time and reality warping seriously.  At least for me.

But it is.  That's why you quoted it, isn't it?  I don't get it.

I was mildly surprised that Sunday's regular puzzle (the one where OVERREACH was the nine-letter) did not accept HOVERCAR.  Sure, Google suggests "hover car," but the Wiki entry is one word.

Me too re: amor, Birdy!  Especially as 'Roma' seems to be allowed (if I'm remembering right?), and that doesn't seem to be a non-capitalized word.