An obscure start

[@jemimahgertrude590]

"Barca" is a type of boat. "Areca" is a type of Asian palm tree. "Sisal" is a Mexican plant whose fibres are used to make rope - this is only one of three I'd heard of. Very entertaining solve!

[@lolasunflower6350]

I've never heard of SUDSY and YOKED😅

[@finlandtaipan4454]

Fun start. I don't know BARCA or ARECA but I know SISAL is a plant-based fiber that makes a strong rope. As far as I have seen, there are no -S plurals in the weekly but -ED past tenses and slightly less common words are ok. Plenty of bonus words this week: SMORE, YOKED, SUDSY, EBOOK, CADRE. I missed a C clue and tried SPEAK instead of SPECK; but that gave me a useful A clue. At the end, I had 5 guesses to spare.

[@furbyfubar]

Yeah, lots of white after your 3 opening words. Unfortunately half of those whites were A's! But I guess there are worse starts than eliminating a common vowel that early? The Weekly Squardle doesn't have (regular) plurals as answers, but the bonus weekly boards my Patreon supporters get do (plus even more -ED and -ER words.). Given you've solved a few custom boards using the bonus boards word list while doing "multiple weeklies at once", plus the vast number of other word games you play, I totally understand why you can't remember what game or game mode uses which list. I only remember because I've spent way too much time staring at words while constructing them. I've been able to *mainly* use word sorting data to select a cut-off point for obscurity, but for the English list I've had to do a lot of hands on sorting to determine if a word *is* a regular plural or present tense verb, and if words ending in -ER -ED were "too derivative" of a shorter word. Plus I've done sanity checks for any word that's flagged as inappropriate or being too much of a loan word. So yeah, plenty of word-staring has been done. I suspect my English vocabulary for words that are specifically 5 letters is now a strangely big if compared to my full vocabulary. Oh, there is one category of regular plurals that are allowed in Squardle even outside of the bonus boards or Squarsle Obscure: Plural only nouns such as PLIERS, CLOTHES or PANTS. You could have a single CLOTH, but the more common definition for CLOTHES isn't quite plural of CLOTH. Another fun coothes-related one I remember I allowed for the XXL answers was CIVVIES. Yes, that could be plural meaning "civilians", but it could also be plural only in the definition "civilian clothes"; for that definition you can't have a single civvy. That example should tell you why automating those kind of word sorting was tricky for me.

[@finlandtaipan4454]

Dordle also seems to allow regular plurals in two cases: 1. the plural has a distinct dictionary definition, such as MORES last week (the moral norms of a society) or CARDS earlier this year (a generic term for card games: "let's play cards"). 2. the word describes things that generally come in pairs or groups, such as TONGS (a while ago). Words like PANTS or JEANS would also work but I haven't seen them yet.

[@graveyard63]

Would be fun if you do a double obscure squardle at the same time if possible

[@StroSolves]

Yeah, I was already thinking about that 😉

[@chunmeishi7510]

I had 7 guesses remaining.