Psychological Poser

[Jacki]

Last night, drifting off to sleep in bed, wondering why it took me half and hour to find the last common word in the ten letter game (cause it was such a simple word!) the thought crossed my mind about the setup of the games.
It’s plainly stated how many seed words there are, how many common words and how many in total.
I wondered if there was no such guidelines would Last Word Syndrome be significantly reduced?
You could just play as usual and when you’d reached each goal a rosette appears next to your name.
I suppose thinking it through, once someone achieved a rosette then others could see what was needed to achieve that if they stopped at that point (like I do).
Oh well, just a thought.

[Morbius]

I'd rather know how close I am.  I suffer from Last Word Syndrome quite often, but knowing I only need one more word for a rosette motivates me to keep looking.   And persistence pays off - I frequently find that last word on the second or third attempt, sometimes within minutes of the puzzle closing.

[pat]

I'm not serious enough about the games to worry about last word syndrome. If I'm doing well I sometimes make an effort to get a rosette (and sometimes succeed), but I quite often finish playing with many words still to be found. Nevertheless I think hiding the target number required would completely spoil it for me. And as Jacki pointed out, once someone had obtained a rosette the number of words required would be indicated anyway.

[yelnats]

My wife and I play the target puzzle from our local paper which only gives good, better,  best but doesn't say if there is more than 1 nine letter word.  I play on Chi and find Chi's levels more realistic probably because of the common/rare classification.

[Calilasseia]

Sadly, it's pretty rare that I reach the point where a rosette is in reach.

I'm also minded to raise my eyebrows sometimes, if I check the solution upon close of play, and wonder how "common" some of the listed words in the solution for some puzzles really are, for those outside of the more rarefied literary strata ... while simultaneously noting that words familiar to me from reading scientific publications are either invariably rare, or absent from the word database altogether ...