The language evolves, we get more words all the time and this is a way to account for that and to not have to tell someone that their answer that is most definitely a word doesn\'t count because it isn\'t in the big ol\' book.
Well said. I equate this to the reason crosswords don\'t really become stale. There\'s always a new word or phrase like \"twerk\" or \"clickbait\" looking to insinuate itself in the mainstream, and I think some of the more savvy \"Countdown\" people may glom onto these new words once they go to the online source. Staunch traditionalists may not like this, but hey.
But one thing does bug me...with the computer, could it be that anyone can now do Susie Dent\'s job? They\'ll still rightly call it \"dictionary corner\", but without that bulging tome there it\'ll seem less like an authoritative source.
What I do think changes positively is that they may use the laptop to find the longest word available for each pool of letters, There are indeed times where Susie will miss the longest word.
