[vicnov]

I think there is probably a research paper hiding inside this game.

I couldn't guess Dice because, as an ESL person, I couldn't make the D-i combo sound like /d/+ /aɪ/ in my head (it sounded as /d/ + /ɪ/), so a part of my neural circuitry didn't fire, and I couldn't complete it with `ce.`

In other words I, personally, in this pattern recognition game rely on the way words sounds in my head to find familiar combinations and continue the sequence.

[Liftyee]

This is an odd and interesting effect. I experienced it and English is my first language.

Couldn't figure out "binding" because in the process of permuting the letters it got sounded out as "bin ding" which I immediately rejected as "not a word". It seems like it's intuitive to permute letters but I forget that you have to permute the sound too, otherwise it won't parse as a word.

[xpct]

On some levels I tried guessing, starting with different letters, and still got into some local minima in my brain where I couldn't guess the word, only for it to be something obvious like 'pound'.

[swyx]

for what its worth you sound ultra fluent in english, so kudos whoever taught you english