June 14 Standard puzzle

[ridethetalk]

Without giving away the seed word, I would like to suggest that this seed word gets demoted to rare...

Just sayin'


2021/08/18 - even though I authored this, I had forgotten what 'the' word was...

...it was INERTNESS

[Greynomad]

Seems fine to me. Over 200 have found it with 12 hours to go.

In fact less have found the Challenge word, which I found easier.

[les303]

For me, i had little trouble finding the seed word in the standard game, once you play the first half of the word then the rest is pretty obvious.
I do admit that it took me quite a while to find the seed word in the challenge game but once found, i was puzzled as to why it had taken me so long to find it.
I appreciate that a lot of players main goal in any game is to achieve the seed word,
My approach is a little bit different.
When i cannot quickly identify the the " big word " then i just forget about it for a while & concentrate on finding smaller words.
Quite often one of those smaller words will flick the switch to find that " big word " that i had almost forgot that i was even looking for.

[Jacki]

I play the same way, actually I quite like it when the seed word takes me a while to find. It keeps it interesting. In fact the other day I got every common word except the seed word in the ten letter - it must have been more than six days ago cause I can’t find the puzzle with it in, and I can’t remember what it was - it’s the early Alzheimer’s I suppose!

[ridethetalk]

It isn't the difficulty in finding the word that I am complaining about. I did find it, obviously, but I contend that the word is not in common usage...

[TRex]

It isn't the difficulty in finding the word that I am complaining about. I did find it, obviously, but I contend that the word is not in common usage...

Ditto from me. When I got the word, I said to my much better half, 'That's a common word?' without giving it away. When we compared, her reaction was similar.

Common in the sense of easily understandable. But when is the last time anyone here used inertness in a sentence?

[ridethetalk]

Common in the sense of easily understandable. But when is the last time anyone here used inertness in a sentence?

Quite so...

[mkenuk]

It is certainly a valid word - it's in the COD and, I'm sure, most other dictionaries. I'm not sure that that is always true of some of the inflected forms that appear as 'common'. I still remember querying ornerier a few years ago!!

Perhaps inertia is more common, but I tend to think of that word being used mainly in a scientific sense.

Remembering that in Chi, 'common' is usually taken to mean 'familiar to an educated, adult native speaker of English' I can't really see how inertness can be anything but common.

I wonder, if the word were to appear in a 10-letter game ('trendiness'. perhaps), would its common status be queried? I suspect not.

[TRex]

Perhaps inertia is more common, but I tend to think of that word being used mainly in a scientific sense.

All too often used in business-speak. 

Remembering that in Chi, 'common' is usually taken to mean 'familiar to an educated, adult native speaker of English' I can't really see how inertness can be anything but common.

IMNSHO, this doesn't seem to apply as much as it once did as attested by changes in the status of dunned, dunning, mooting, luau, staph, tamale, auricle, lapin, tattooer, termini, rime, gladiola, gerund, kith, octal, orate, collocate, parolee, outdraw, outdrew, nonet, limn, limned, fain, loosed, loosing, sonatina, educe, educed, osculate, confute, confuted, angstrom, centavo, demotic, irenic, oldster, neonate, legato — and a whole lot more. Is, for instance, oldster NOT 'familiar to an educated, adult native speaker of English'

[mkenuk]

A motley collection of words, indeed, TRex. They include non-English words (luau, tamale ), abbreviations (staph), 'scientific' terms (angstrom, octal), classical plurals ( termini, gladiola) and many others. One doesn't really need to ask why such words were reclassified.
For myself, I had no idea what luau or tamale meant when I first encountered them - ('common' words that I had missed in a Chi game).

Look no further than the COD definition to see why oldster should not be common - Informal, chiefly Nth American - an older person.
Easy enough to work out what it means if I come across it in a novel, but I would certainly not consider it part of my active vocabulary; oldie, perhaps, or wrinkly would be much more common in UK.

I have no scientific or statistical evidence to support this, it is merely a hypothesis, but I suspect that when we play Chi we are, at least at first, looking for words that are part of our active vocabulary.

[TRex]

I have no scientific or statistical evidence to support this, it is merely a hypothesis, but I suspect that when we play Chi we are, at least at first, looking for words that are part of our active vocabulary.

Which is why I wrote:

Common in the sense of easily understandable. But when is the last time anyone here used inertness in a sentence?

ISTM 'familiar to an educated, adult native speaker of English' and 'words that are a part of our active vocabulary' are not the same.

[pat]

Common in the sense of easily understandable. But when is the last time anyone here used inertness in a sentence?

There are lots of common  Chi words that I've never used in a sentence!

[Greynomad]

Common in the sense of easily understandable. But when is the last time anyone here used inertness in a sentence?

Quite so...

Probably about the same time I used Seditious

[TRex]

Unfortunately, the word seditious has become much more used in the U.S.A. since the sixth of January.

[Ozzyjack]

Unfortunately, the word seditious has become much more used in the U.S.A. since the sixth of January.

A good article that addresses the point and also discusses the changing meaning of treason over time