I'll answer three of Dave's recent suggestions in this one thread.

As Dave implies, words that are used in such well-known writings as the King James Bible and Shakespeare's works have a strong case for being allowed, even where the words are now archaic. On this basis, we've added several -eth and -est verb inflections on previous occasions.

The words Dave proposes - aileth, healeth and readest - will all be added and, for the sake of at least some degree of consistency, I'll also add the related words ailest, healest and readeth.

Birdy swoops again. I got an email from this player saying, "Monday Oct. 15 puzzle.  You haven't heard of 'Pride GOETH before a fall'?"

Actually, the biblical passage, from Proverbs, reads: "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." But let's not quibble.

Anyhow, for some reason the word goeth is not currently allowed in Chihuahua. We added goest a few months ago, but not its sibling. Both words are used many times in the King James Bible. So I'll add goeth.

Go to Word List Updates to see details of the latest 37 words added as allowable Chihuahua words.

When I went to add shotten (suggested by Dave in this topic), I found it was already there.

As noted by a couple of people in other topics, the Lexigame websites were unavailable for some time recently. It appears that the server was down for just over an hour and a half, starting about 6 hours ago. The problem (whatever it may have been) and its resolution were out of my hands, as I use the services of a Web hosting company.

Sorry to everyone who was inconvenienced. I'm only glad it happened in the middle of the night, my time, so it was all over by the time I knew anything about it!

A visitor to the Ozlip site sent this query to me:

I am a Canadian living in Brisbane and I discovered your site while searching for a definition of "bludge" or "bludger".  I apparently used this term incorrectly when I recently said to a friend, "I bludged the conference" as in, I skipped-out on the conference.  Apparently, this behaviour makes me a bludger and I was indeed bludging, but for some reason I don't yet understand, I didn't bludge the conference.  Please explain.

Here is the reply I sent him:

Since the Ozlip word list is presented in support of my game, it's restricted to words of 3 and 4 letters, which is why "bludge" is not covered. However I'm happy to try to enlighten you.

Actually, what you could have said was that you wagged the conference. Originally meaning to play truant from school, "wag" has come to be used also for skipping a meeting, conference, etc. It can be used transitively: "wagging school", or in the phrase "wag it", where the "it" doesn't refer to anything specific: "He did badly in his studies because he used to wag it all the time." "Wag" in this sense is widely used in Australia - and I claim it as an Australianism for my game - but it seems to be used regionally in England as well.

If you bludge something, the something is an object you are cadging: "Can I bludge a smoke off you, mate?" But "bludge" is most often used intransitively - you don't bludge anything, you just bludge: "I couldn't be bothered going to the conference - I just stayed home and bludged." You can bludge ON somebody, meaning you slack off at their expense: "Bludging on the taxpayers". Originally this referred to a pimp "bludging on" a prostitute.

"Bludge" can also be a noun, for an easy job or assignment. "This course is a bit of a bludge."

As is often the case with slang words, "bludge" can be used as a strongly derogatory term, or in a mild, almost neutral, sense. It all depends on the context. The phrase "dole bludger" is used as a highly disparaging term for people alleged to be avoiding jobs and living at the taxpayers' expense. On the other hand, somebody might say to a workmate, "I feel like bludging this afternoon." So, feel free to call yourself a bludger, but be careful about calling someone else one!

I thought people might be interested in this information, or have something further to add...

From time to time, players have complained about days when the same words can be made in both the daily puzzles, and the dangers of leaving words out because you think you've already played them. For example, in the topic It's a conspiracy, I tell you! a correspondent wrote:

Dear Sir,

I note with concern that, yet again, the Standard and the Challenge puzzles contain  several of the same letters. As one who attempts both puzzles, and as one who has problems chewing gum and thinking at the same time, I find this Confusing and Infuriating. Is it a plot ? Are subversive influences at work here? Am I the only one who constantly forgets which word I am looking for?     I suppose the rest of the Chi-ers sail through with nary a backward glance, but I remain, Sir,

Troubled of Tunbridge Wells.

Since there have been two daily puzzles, there have been words in common on about one day in five. On most of these days, there have been only a handful of repeated words, but there have been occasions when a substantial overlap occurred. (The most extreme case was 30 August 2006, when there were 8 common letters. On that day there were 73 words common to the two puzzles.)

Since most regular players seem to play both puzzles, this has probably been an annoyance to quite a few people, so I've adjusted the system for creating daily puzzles to make common words less likely. It will still happen - I don't want to take all the excitement out of life - but much less frequently.

In another topic, Colhad said:

Untongued should be a word, dammit!!!

Colhad, untongued is a word, gorblimey! The Shorter Oxford says it means without a tongue, tongueless. I'll add it to the word list when it's next updated, but of course that won't make it available for today's puzzle. And since it's a nine-letter word, it will be a long time before the letters come up again. Sorry about that.