Too much knowledge can be a bad thing

This isn’t a rant, but an account of something amusing that just happened to me.

While my computer was busy preparing a backup I was playing the game Text Twist (Palm OS version), where you are given 6 letters (e.g. USECED) and have to find words of 3 or more letters that can be formed from those 6 letters (e.g. USE, SEE, CEDE, CEDES, etc.). The more words you find, the more points you get. The critical thing is to find at least one 6-letter word (there’s guaranteed to be one), or you are tossed out of the game. (In the case of USECED, there are two such words, DEUCES and SEDUCE. But usually there’s only one word.) For assistance you can click “Twist”, which randomly reorders the letters.

This round I was presented with the letters EINSUX. It didn’t take me long to find UNIXES, a familiar name from my computer background, but not a valid word in Text Twist’s dictionary. Then I found USENIX; same problem. I couldn’t find anything other than those two before the clock ran out on me, and I wonder whether they blinded me from finding the valid word that was there. Which was UNISEX.