Perhaps doxydaisy's and Leedscot's comments would have been clearer if they had distinguished between puzzles that allow plurals and puzzles that do not. In most puzzles, allowing the letter
s as one of the seed letters is not going to increase the number of words in a puzzle. The size of the puzzle is specified by the generator. Allowing simple plurals (those that are created by the simple addition of
s) does increase the size of the puzzle, particularly for jumbo-sized puzzles. As I write this there is an active puzzle in Your Puzzles that has 950 words, 266 of which are common! Absurd. But it is easy to avoid generating or playing such monstrosities without avoiding the letter
s.
Those of us who have been playing Chihuahua from the beginning or nearly so don't find the issue of plurals nearly so confusing as doxydaisy and other newcomers do. The rule on the home page of Chihuahua is very straightforward: "You cannot use plurals and verb forms made by adding S to the end of a base word". The reality is different. We have seen Alan's policy on them evolve over the years. We may even have been part of the discussions that led to the way things are now. Remember PANTS? Alan addresses these exceptions on
the Questions and Answers page, but I wonder how many people actually look there.
I myself truly enjoy the 7 by many puzzles. When the idea was first put forward, I was a bit uncertain, but when they were introduced I jumped in with both feet. I failed to notice that
s had been excluded. I'm glad it has been made available in the Your Puzzles pool. As long is it is available there, I doubt I will miss it in the daily puzzle.