English compounds tend to drift from two words, to a hyphen, to a single word as they become familiar — though not every word completes the journey.
“Base ball” became “base-ball” became “baseball.” “E-mail” is well on its way to a permanent “email.” Frequent use sands the seams away.
Some open compounds resist closing, often because smashing them together would look odd or ambiguous: “ice cream,” “post office,” “real estate.”
The daily puzzle is built on closed compounds — the one-word kind — because those give the cleanest, most satisfying bridges.
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