Seriously, where are all the nine-letter words beginning with S?

Philip Stenning has been studying words beginning with S. Photograph: Getty

Since I retired a few years ago, I’ve so far played 829 games of Wordle (seven days a week) and 662 games of Word Wheel (six days days a week in the Guardian), mainly to help keep my mind active.

During that time, I’ve become increasingly puzzled by the fact that there have so far been many (124) different five-letter words beginning with S to be guessed in Wordle games, but no nine-letter words at all beginning with S to be identified in Word Wheel games.

So, given that my surname begins with S, I looked in my big Oxford English Reference Dictionary for an explanation for this, and have found 52 different qualifying five-letter words for Wordle (ie not proper nouns), and 61 qualifying nine-letter words for Word Wheel, in the 22 pages of the dictionary devoted to words beginning with SA.

I’m not so short of better things to do with my time that I was prepared to go through all of the 196 pages of the dictionary devoted to words beginning with S, although I do quite often seem to have found the time to send letters to the editor of the Guardian. Yours, still quite puzzled.
Philip Stenning
Eccleshall, Staffordshire

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