Spoilers for Thursday 29th May 2025 (Series 91, Heat 104)

[Gavin Chipper]

Susie allowed HOORAYS, slightly controversially. See Apterous ticket here if you can. Copied and pasted from the ticket (thanks Fiona):

hooray
Pronunciation: /hʊˈreɪ/
exclamation
1
used to express joy or approval:
This book has won all sorts of prizes. Hooray!
hooray for getting up late on Sunday, and doing absolutely nothing
2Australian and New Zealand English
goodbye:
‘Hooray George, promise you'll come back.’
Synonyms
Origin
late 19th century (in hooray (sense 2 of the interjection)): variant of hurrah.

Can you pluralise an exclamation? I don't mean in some philosophical sense. I mean, is it a rule?

Philip suggested in the ticket that HOORAY is missing (erroneously) from the HURRAH entry, which is there as a noun and verb. But we can't assume that and it's not as if Susie has a separate dictionary with the title "What the dictionary would be if there were no mistakes". Susie doesn't have privileged knowledge. So if it looks like a mistake, it's not the right thing to do to start thinking of obscure reasons why the decision should be seen as correct.

[Gavin Chipper]

On exclamations, this discussion has taken place before with cheerios. See here, here and here. Also on the wiki here. Basically, Susie has offered it before (it's not come from a contestant), and most people seem to have disagreed with her decision. It has not been added on Apterous.

However, there seems to be a general consensus that Susie doesn't check words offered by DC as thoroughly as those offered by contestants. HOORAYS was offered by a contestant in this game, so the decision to allow it could be considered as more binding. I would still see adding it on Apterous as slightly dodgy, as there appears to be no dictionary-based reason for it. Susie can make mistakes.

[Philip Wilson]

Just watched this episode and Susie implied that HOORAYS is valid as a verb and quoted 'to shout hurrah', if that helps! Agreed it isn't mentioned as a verb in the premium oed though.