Plurals?

[kaeru]

Having my morning cuppa I usually call up the 3am Chi, see if my limited brain is working early in the morning. I just hit "solution" for 5th February as although I got the big 9 letter word I didn't do too well with the "easy" words, although I have to admit I didn't sit here very long to try. To my surprise, horror? I found the solution's listed words in red included many plurals. Can some one please explain? Have I misread the rules? Every time I have forgotten and put in a plural I have been refused. Is there a difference in making a plural with an S or an ES?  "...you cannot use plurals and verb forms made by adding S to the end of a base word" So using ES is OK?

Cheers to all.

[pat]

Hi Kaeru. The only plurals not allowed (generally speaking) are those formed by simply adding ‘s’. Adding ‘es’ is fine, as are other ways of making plurals such as child/children, lady/ladies etc.

[Alan W]

Yes, kaeru, it's as pat describes. The rationale for it is that it would be tedious to play all the plurals that can be made by simply adding an S, whereas there is a bit of thinking required in coming up with the valid derived words that can be made by adding ES (or ED, etc). It's unusual to have a puzzle with quite so many allowed plurals - a result of having the letters for words ending in SSES and SHES.

I took this approach originally from the rule that is generally followed in newspaper puzzles of the Target Words type, although the stated rules usually just say "no plurals" or "no plurals ending in 's'".

[kaeru]

Thank you Pat and Alan, and to my great delight I might now actually get a few more words!!! I celebrate when I get a rosette, I will never get all the words, my vocab doesn't go anywhere near that!!! I will struggle on, becoming more addicted!!  Keeping my old brain going a little longer, I know I have one, the last CAT scan proved that to my family !!!! Some days I do wonder though.