Sufferin’ Suffixes

I was playing Big Boggle with someone recently—let’s call her “Mary” (Warning: not her real name)—and we entered into a disagreement over the validity of “cide,” which she had played for a point. I didn’t think that was a word, so I challenged it and looked it up in the American Heritage dictionary. There, it is listed as a suffix, used in words such as suicide, genocide and patricide. I argued it was not a legal Big Boggle word and shouldn’t count; she argued otherwise.

My Argument

1. The Big Boggle rules state that “each player searches the assortment of letters for words of four letters or more.” (emphasis mine)
2. A suffix, like a prefix, is not a word; it is an affix, which is “a word element” (emphasis mine) “that can only occur attached to a base, stem, or root.”
3. Therefore, suffixes aren’t playable.
4. Also, I know everything about Big Boggle, or at least act like I do.

Her Argument

1. The Big Boggle rules specify nothing about suffixes, only “words that can be found in an English language dictionary.”
2. A dictionary is “a reference book that contains words listed in alphabetical order.”
3. Suffixes are found in dictionaries.
4. Therefore, suffixes are legal to play in Big Boggle.
5. Furthermore, the Big Boggle rules list “Types of Words Not Allowed”:
   1. proper nouns
   2. abbreviations
   3. contractions
   4. hyphenated words
   5. foreign words that are not in an English dictionary
6. Suffixes are not on this list, so they count.
7. Finally, what do I know about Big Boggle anyway, seeing how I grossly misstated several rules to Mary directly before challenging her to her first-ever game:
   1. I said words of eight letters or more are worth 10 points; they are worth 11.
   2. I said the “Qu” cube counts as one letter; it counts as two.
   3. I said playing proper nouns was legal; it is not.

With whom do you side, dear reader, and why?