[robsh]

Agreed. When I type a good word that isn’t accepted, I usually just stop playing that days puzzle. My guess is that Sam is not very scientifically literate. Simple weather words like cyclonic or adiabatic, advection, no dice. And then you get some pretty obscure literary words.

Makes me want to make a free clone that includes science words, and isn’t afraid of the letter S.

[stavros]

I think your definition of "simple" doesn't agree with the average person's. I guarantee you that 98% of people don't know the word "adiabatic".

[avalys]

It’s a very common word in many technical domains. Not like it’s a guy’s name or something.

[stavros]

"It's a very common word in extremely niche domains" doesn't make something common, unfortunately.

[bobthepanda]

It is also very culturally biased; some loanwords are more present than others

[dhc02]

The omissions that kill me are common nautical terms.

[1over137]

And so many "non-American" words are rejected too like: whinge, colour, metre, etc.

[CamperBob2]

"Whinge" is just a plain old misspelling of "Whine," nothing more or less. We don't need "Whinge" to become a word; we already have "Whine."

[seanhunter]

"Whinge" definitively is a word[1] and has existed since old English.

[1] https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=Whing...

[CamperBob2]

Well, it shouldn't be. It's entirely redundant with 'whine'.

[seanhunter]

Where do you stand on "guarantee" vs "warranty"?

That's not to mention common phrases with a built-in redundancy such as "Cease and desist"? "Face mask"? "Free gift"?

Idiomatic English has lots of redundancies of one kind or another.

[CamperBob2]

Those aren't really redundant, though. I can say, "I guarantee that this product will work," but nobody would say, "I warranty that this product will work." (You could argue that guarantee is redundant with warrant, but the police don't go to the judge to request a search guarantee. Both words are needed.)

I can't think of a single use case for whinge that wouldn't be equally satisfied by whine. Can you?

[olddustytrail]

No it isn't. What gave you that daft idea?

[CamperBob2]

It's a stupid word, one that we don't need. 'Whine' works just fine. Why was it necessary to add a 'g'?

You can see 'whinge' gaining ground very recently at the expense of 'whine' here:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=whine%2Cwhinge...

This is an outrage, and must be stopped. :-P

[ChainOfFools]

no homophones. whine shares a phonemic address with wine, while whinge staked out a plot of its very own, even if its just a slapdash pop-up tent next door to the local drunkard, binge. hinge shares a smartly bricked-up border with both.

[lozenge]

It feels like they could just use something like the Google Ngram viewer to filter the words.

[avalys]

I’m still pissed about advection!

[arijun]

What does “isn’t afraid of the letter S” mean?

[spyspy]

spelling bee puzzles never contain S. Originally they didn't include puzzles with e+d or i+n+g either.