I'm generally reluctant to visit commercial puzzle sites, because they usually have a lot of adware and tracking cookies.

But the puzzle you describe sounds very similar to one that appears each week in the New York Times magazine, which comes with the Sunday paper. It's called "Spelling Bee" by Frank Longo and consists of 1 center letter, which must always be used, plus a circle of 6 more letters around it. The goal is to make as many words as possible of 5 or more letters. Letters may be reused; proper nouns and hyphenated words are not allowed. You get 1 point per word, and 3 points for any word that uses all 7 letters.

https://nytimes.com/2017/03/04/crosswords/a-l...

Here are the last several weeks, which we're still working on. (I hate to give up until I at least get respectably close to their best score, but often we just have to admit defeat.)

3/5
C + A I M O T X
their best score: 20

3/12
U + A C H O R T
their best score: 28
(Is the 7-letter word optionally hyphenated? Is that fudging?)

3/19
M + E I R T X Y
their best score: 21

3/26
G + A B E H L U
their best score: 26

4/2
U + A E I M R T
their best score: 28

4/9
L + E F N T U V
their best score: 22

4/16
L + A C N P T U
their best score: 19

4/23
C + A D I M O T
their best score: 27

__________________

I can imagine that it could be extremely frustrating for learners, because it's frustrating enough for native speakers. For example ...

s p o i l e r

.
.
.
.
.

For the 3/5 puzzle I got

axiomatic (3 pts)
commit
cacti
comma
tactic
toccata
attic
atomic
toxic
comic

plus words that I believe can be found in a dictionary, if not in their list:

cotta (a part of a choir robe)
cotto (a type of salami)
ataxic (having ataxia)

But I missed, according to their list,

acacia
cacao
coati
cocoa
commix (?)
mimic
tacit
tomcat

Duh. It's harder than it looks, and some days are just better than others.

But that last puzzle, 4/23, should ring a bell with people in this forum. (-:

Ich bin jetzt bis 147 Punkte (56 Wörter) gekommen. Das Wort mit allen Buchstaben habe ich nicht gefunden. Ich glaube, bei solchen Spielen hängt viel von der Geduld ab, also wann man aufgibt. Wenn man sich ein paar Stunden später oder gar am nächsten Tag nochmal dransetzt, findet man sicher noch mehr Wörter.

Das Wort mit allen Buchstaben ist so ein "Schuppen-von-den-Augen"-Ding. :D Wenn du schon 56 Wörter hast, hast du bestimmt mindestens einen der beiden Bestandteile schon.

Das ist mir auch schon passiert, aber armorer geht wirklich nicht. Das hat drei R, es gibt aber nur zwei.

Äh ... ups. :D

Was hast Du getan, Emily?! Jetzt muss ich jeden Tag auf dieses Rätsel schauen und kann nicht ruhen, bis ich mindestens den Neunbuchstaber und Stufe B habe. Heute bin ich mit 80 Wörtern und 251 Punkten solide bei C, bin aber etwas enttäuscht, dass das schöne Wort onesie nicht angenommen wird. Bei den dreibuchstabigen Wörtern empfiehlt sich tatsächlich Jalapeños Methode aus #3: einfach alle Kombinationen durchpermutieren, das Programm sucht sich die richtigen heraus.

This has certain resemblances to the family (and facebook) game called Boggle. The most obvious resemblance is the 'How could I have missed that?' effect. Anyway, I'm currently at 87 words (266 points) and the law of diminishing returns has set in with a vengeance.

So schöne Kreationen wie "telesonic" oder "Leonetics" wurden leider auch nicht angenommen ;)

However it did allow 'onliest' (which I entered in the hope/expectation of rejection), and 'onsite' as one word.

Und der heutige Neunbuchstaber ist nicht von Pappe... oder doch? ;o))

Das ist gepfuscht! Jetzt habe ich den Neunbuchstaber als erstes Wort geraten.

It'll probably be a paperchase - I' m not cut out for it ;)

The procedure of the puzzle-setter is obviously to start from the guaranteed nine-letter word. I presume the central letter is chosen randomly. Today this results in a poor harvest but probably less wasted time.

>>fient, gant, gat, geat, geit, geta, gite, infeft

You can't be serious.

If a computer program can't distinguish between real words and dictionary artifacts, it shouldn't be allowed to pretend to be expert in a language.

I would really seriously suggest you all move to the New York Times magazine website, where you can at least count on sentient human editors, not computers. It's a fun kind of puzzle, but it shouldn't be ruined by incompetence.