3-D Boggle: Letter from the Editor

After finding all of the words listed in my previous post, I wrote a note to the creator of my favorite puzzles. Will Shortz is quite an accomplished puzzler. He was actually the first (and thus far, only) person to achieve a college degree in the study of word puzzles. I met him a decade ago at a Scrabble function that was organized with a literacy group to help raise money and awareness in the name of adult literacy. Each Scrabble expert present was paired with a celebrity in a game against another expert/celeb pair. I was paired with Tina Louise, who had finally been rescued from Gilligan's Island. Although she was putting her back into helping illiterate adults, she wasn't especially gifted (or interested) in Scrabble. Our pairing was mostly about me playing a few odd words and the still-beautiful desert castaway oohing and ahing about them. It wasn't as bad as it sounds.

Will was kind enough to send me the note that follows. I guess he means that the 65 words he alluded to when the puzzle appeared were a 'complete' list. I know that my list has at least two words not on his; altho he didn't include his words, there is no way to account for the fact that my list has 67 words (including KIKES) or 66 words (without it).

z writes:

Hi David,

Congratulations on your fine list of 3-D Word Hunt answers!

One of my puzzle testers was able to check my solution against an
electronic edition of Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate, so I'm
basically certain that my list, which will be published next Sunday, is
complete.

Please let me know if this is not the case!

--Will

It's only Wednesday, so I'm itchy to find out what words from my list are missing from his. At this point I'm guessing that KIKES is one of them, which would necessitate a letter from me to the editor of the magazine. After all, a word's a word (and that one is DEFINITELY in Merriam-Webster's.

Here are the 67 words that I'm sure of: AIRER *AIRTS ALACK ALIVE *ANENT ATONE ATRIA *ATRIP *CAIRD CANAL CANON CANTO DIVOT ENACT EVENT KIKES LAIRD *LANAI LENTO LEVEL LILAC *LITAI LITRE LIVEN LIVID *NATAL NOOSE NOVEL *OOTID PIANO PIKER PIKES PLANE PLANT *PLATS *PLENA RESTS *RIANT RIATA SCALE SCALP SCANT SCATS *SERER *SERES SOOTS STACK STAIR STALE *STANE STATS STILE STONE *STOTS STOVE *STRIA STRIP TITAN TITRE TONAL TOOTS TOTAL TRIAL TRIKE VENAL VITAL VIVID (*= uncommon, of which there are 16)

Removed from my earlier list: ALANE ALANT ANELE DREST NOTAL PLACK *TANTO *TRIAC.
These last words are NOT in the abridged MW that appears online. I was under the assumption that the dictionary was just not working when I tried a few of these (like ALANE) that I knew from Scrabble. I'll have to be more careful next time. Still, I did beat the number that z had set as the maximum -- now I just have to wait till Sunday!