[michaeld123]

Longest paths: The tail maxes out at 15 hops. These extreme paths are disappointingly mechanical—not the poetic distances you'd hope for:

* Technical jargon → unrelated obscurities: gryllacridid (cricket family) → microclots * Proper nouns → common words: Trish Stratus (wrestler) → federating Numbers → anything: 9451 → shoulds

Mostly hyper-specific terms with few inbound connections, obscure conjugations, or rare idioms.

Superconnectors: We systematically removed generic hubs, but your question prompted us to analyze which words still act as natural bridges. Added it to the article with an interactive explorer! Top survivors:

* polish (0.18% of paths) - verb/nationality homograph * symbiosis (0.14%) - biology → cooperation bridge * treaty (0.13%) - conflict → resolution bridge

Thanks for the curiosity—it led to an interesting addition. Age correlation: No hard data, but I suspect you're right. Older words have had centuries to accumulate meanings and develop polysemous bridges.