Twisting the TextTwist

For some time, I've enjoyed that Yahoo game, Text Twist. You get six or seven tiles, and a form is supplied on which the words you make with those tiles are inserted, in some order; three letter, four letter, up to max, and the order stays the same. While the game can be timed, I chose to just play at it, untimed; and I discovered that it can be stored at any point and resumed later. Finding the longest word guarantees another round, so if the first three words include that longest word, there's a good point to exit it!

It was convenient to look at the stored words when I hadn't found every word that some group of six or seveen would afford. Deduce that the four letter word that's missing must begin with a certain vowel, and that word usually comes to mind.

Playing Text Twist was probably improving my ability to anagram longer words. Unfortunately, I've now realized the order storage is arranged in. Upside down, or sometimes right side down, the longest word is spelled by the initial letters. My whole tack has changed. Now I happily churn out small words rapidly and if that longest word hasn't come up by haphazard churning, I'm using that left-hand side to tell me what that longest word is. Result: great laziness of anagram mindset. It's becoming a problem to "get" the five-letter words because nobody's giving them to me. While I could justify playing so often as maybe improving some ability, now I'm rapidly deteriorating. May need a new tile game. Suggestions?