I'll likely play again after I've had some time to mentally reset.
Have you considered just having 'matchable' terms light up purple? This was probably a really cool concept when there were a handful of words. But the current design (unattempted are white, attempted matches turn gray) just isn't meant to be scaled like this.
No, we're not planning on that. The mini-game was always meant to be like Little Alchemy. While we made the gameplay a bit more casual for convenience, we won't simplify it to the point where it loses its challenge. I recommend taking a more relaxed approach to getting traits and not trying to find every single thought