This is the 7-letter word game.  It works like this:  One person is "it".
That person thinks of a seven-letter word.  It must be a real, English
word, which can be found in some dictionary.

Other players try to guess the word, and their guesses must also be real,
English words.  The person who is "it" scores the guesses according to how
many letters in the guess match those in the word he's thinking of.  So for
instance, if the word is "privacy", then the scoring might go like this:

        waffles  0  (no letters in common with privacy)
        splashy  1  (both splashy and privacy have y as the 7th letter)
        spinach  3  (spinach and privacy match in 3 places)
 
etc.  The game continues until someone guesses a word, and then that
person becomes "it", and the whole thing starts over again.

Complete rules are in ~rcurl/letter.match .  They were written for the 5-
letter version of the game, but you can figure it out.  It's customary
for the person who's "it" to store a list of all the current guesses in a
file called letter.match7 in his or her home directory.  So for instance
if kentn is "it", the guesses so far will be in ~kentn/letter.match7 .
Some people also display all guesses so far when they score a new guess.

1031 responses total.

  octonal  0  (lastword)

And they're off!

octonal was a very good work, Kent.  I'm still not sure I could use it in a
sentence, though...

referee

  referee  1  (aruba)

Sometimes, onelook would find it, and sometimes not.  The first reference I
found was to fragrance, the second was to c8h17oh .

I finally decided to bite the bullet and let Kent define it. :)

C8H17OH is octanol, not octonal. Neither is octanal, which would be C7H15CHO,
which is an aldehyde (octanaldehyde, in earlier nomenclature). There is no
chemical octonal. The name does show up on some web pages for items written
by dyslexic chemists.    

And read by same. :(

The first reference I had found was octanal, Octyl aldehyde, C8H160
(http://www.speclab.com/compound/c124130.htm).  The second reference was
to octanols.

"octyl aldehyde" is one of its names, but not the IUPAC name. The full
suite of names can be found at (say)
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/OC/octyl_aldehyde.html
octanal is the IUPAC name. Of course, none of this is the least bit
relevant to the perfectly good word octonal.

umpires

element

  umpires  0  (albaugh)
  element  0  (aruba)

re 0 Isn't picospan good up to about 2000 responses?  Or is it tradition to
restart items as such?

Tradition.

Regardless, YAPP is god to like 2000 responses; dunno about picospan.

So of the thousands of responses, some 2000 of them have a god, and its name
is YAPP, have I got that right?  ;-)

Meanwhile:

nucleus

  nucleus  0  (albaugh)

BTW, the State of the Guess in is in ~gelinas/letter.match7

defeats

  defeats  1  (aruba)

defense

berated

guesses

  defense  1  (albaugh)
  berated  2  (aruba)
  guesses  0  (naftee)

By the way, welcome to the game, naftee.

Thanks Joe!

believe

  believe  2  (aruba)

holiday

bemused

  holiday  1  (albaugh)
  bemused  1  (aruba)

bordage

  bordage  0  (kentn)

celadon  (a grayish yellow green)

yellows

  celadon  3  (aruba)
  yellows  2  (albaugh)

cynodon (creeping perennial grasses of tropical and southern Africa)

  cynodon  0  (aruba)

grasses

malaria

  grasses  0  (albaugh)
  malaria  3  (aruba)

disease

  disease  0  (albaugh)

masters

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