Since the 7-by-many puzzles were introduced a few months ago, several forumites have noted that a lot of new questions have emerged regarding words classed as common.

In this post I present a list of words that probably should be switched to rare. Some arise from suggestions made by players, in the forum and by email. Others emerged from my own investigations of words that have been found by very few players.

Among these words are -

• Compound words that many players would expect to be hyphenated or separate words. For example antitank, applesauce
• Less common spellings. For example caviare, papaw
• Non-standard plurals. For example cochliae, corpora
• Technical terms. For example allele, bilabial
• Words with a regional character. For example cruller, cuppa

Many others are just simply too obscure - it seems to me. I've omitted from the list below any words that I have doubts about. They can be discussed separately at some stage. But of course others may see things differently, so I'm putting these words out here for people to comment on.

ALLELE
ALLELUIA
ALLUVIA
AMMETER
ANTITANK
APPLESAUCE
ARBORETA
ARROYO
AUREOLE
BAAING
BACILLI
BANKBOOK
BERIBERI
BILABIAL
BITTIER
BOCCE
BOLOGNA
BOLONEY
BONITO
BUBBA
CALCINE
CANEBRAKE
CARRYALL
CATCHALL
CAVIARE
CINNABAR
CIRRHOTIC
CLAYEY
CLOACA
CLOACAE
COCHLEAE
COLONELCY
CONDIGN
CORNROW
CORPORA
COTILLION
CRAWDAD
CRULLER
CUPPA
DEWCLAW
DINGDONG
DOODAD
DOODAH
DURUM
DWEEB
EGGNOG
ENPLANE
EUCHRED
EXPATIATE
FINNIEST
FOREFEET
FOREFOOT
FOREPART
FREEBEE
FREEDMEN
GALLERIA
GANGLIA
GANGLION
GASOHOL
HOMEROOM
HYAENA
IFFIER
INDITING
IODIDE
IRRUPT
LACUNAE
LANDAU
LOANWORD
LOGGIA
LOLLYGAG
MAHATMA
MAMBO
MARIACHI
MARMOREAL
MATZO
MIMETIC
MINICAB
MINICAM
MONOMER
MOROCCO
MORPHEME
NEMESES
NONAPPEARANCE
NONUNION
NONWHITE
NOONTIDE
OENOLOGY
ONCOGENE
OUBLIETTE
PALATAL
PANATELLA
PAPAW
PARTICIPIAL
PATELLAE
PEEWIT
PENNON
PHALLI
PIMIENTO
POMPON
PREMIXES
PREPPIE
PROPITIATION
PSHAW
RAILCARD
RECHERCHE
RECREANT
REFERENT
RIFFRAFF
RIPARIAN
ROLLOVER
ROOMETTE
ROOTLET
SASSAFRAS
SISSIFIES
SPEEDUP
TAGLIATELLE
TAILPIPE
TARTARIC
TATTOOER
TAXON
TELEPRINTER
TERCENTENARY
TERMINI
TERRARIA
TITMICE
TOLLBOOTH
TOMTIT
TRACHEAE
TRIREME
ULULATING
VEGGIEBURGER
VITIATION
VOCALIC
VOTARY
WAPITI
WELKIN
ZINNIA

In March a player sent this suggestion in via email:

Hi Alan,
I'm playing a 7-by-many puzzle in Your Puzzles (BACKBONE) and tried the word EBOOK which was unknown.  It's spelled ebook on my library site (and many other places) and when I google it I also got Ebook, e-book and eBook.  Could ebook be classified as uncommon?
Thanks,

So far the dictionaries all seem to list e-book as the primary spelling. Dictionary.com and Wiktionary both give alternate forms of ebook and eBook. This last version is probably quite unusual in the dictionary world. While there are lots of brand names having a capital letter in the middle of a word, I think it's very unusual in words recognized as common nouns.

In usage all the versions are seen quite frequently. There's no doubt that ebook should be allowed in Chi. But should it be uncommon, as the suggester proposes? Probably it should, at least for the time being, precisely because of the multiple variants of the word.

This topic has been moved to Words.

https://theforum.lexigame.com/index.php?topic=4024.0

This blog post, 50 lost words from the OED is about a man who read the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary and wrote a book about it. It lists fifty of the strangest words he found, with their definitions. I thought it would appeal to some forumites. Which are your favourites?

I haven't checked whether any of these words are allowed in Chihuahua, but I would say probably not.

Over the next few days the chi.lexigame.com and letterbox.lexigame.com sites will be moving to a new web hosting service. Ideally this will not cause any interruptions to service or visible changes. However, there could be some unexpected issues, so please feel free to let me know of anything out of the ordinary. In particular the sites may not be available at first via the "https:" addresses, and this may cause some security warnings to be displayed by your browser.

If there are any serious problems you can always get to Chihuahua at chihuahua-puzzle.com.

This forum now has a new home. Instead of being under lexigame.com it is at https://theforum.lexigame.com/. All forum visits should be automatically redirected to the new address.

The main problem (that I can think of) that some people might have with the move is that they don't get automatically signed in at the new location (because cookies are tied to a site address). If you can't work out how to log into the forum now, send me an email to support@lexigame.com and I'll sort something out for you.

The main reason for this change of location is to simplify any future migration of the lexigame site to a different hosting provider. But in any case it might be a good long-term approach to have the forum at a different site from the main Chihuahua site, to minimise the disruption if either is out of action for a while.

Please let me know of any problems with the forum at its new home.

Following up on a suggestion made by markm in another topic, There is a new button, labeled "Mix", to allow the letters of a puzzle to be randomly rearranged, except for the mandatory letter, which remains in the middle. The button is under the recently-introduced backspace button, towards the bottom left of the board:



Also, in 7-by-many puzzles, the Shuffle button now functions as it does in other puzzle types. If any letters have been played, all those letters are shuffled.

I've noticed your suggestion in another topic, and it'll be interesting to see what others think about it.

It's great to hear from you. Look forward to more.