The third one in the archive wouldn't accept "tase" or "sate" for "seat".

I've built a some word games over the years (e.g., wordwhile.com, omiword.com), and one thing I've discovered is that players find it very unsatisfying when they enter a real, valid word and the game rejects it. I imagine that the timer would amplify that sense of unfairness.

Granted, there are also people who get annoyed when the game seems too accepting of unusual words, but if you can point them to a valid dictionary definition for that oddball word, they usually accept it without argument.

On today's puzzle, `WROGHT` was rejected, and I got `GROWTH` just in the nick of time.

Going two days back in the archive, "egret" not allowed

"braze" is a very common word, especially if you like bicycles.

Definitely not any less valid or unsatisfying than "zebra".

Why not just only allow a single try, but accept any "real" word?

the obvious solution is to not use the words that have an obscure word as anagram. I failed on 'target' because I went for 'regatta'.

quite/quiet

Did you find a word that wasn't accepted you thought should be?

EARLS was not accepted, and I had already decided not to try REALS. (is there a rule against plurals?) what it was looking for was LASER which has a more tenuous claim on being a word than those two.

300,000? The Oxford dictionary only contains 171,000!