I don’t know, somehow CHICA is accepted, and I don’t know that as anything but a Spanish word (and, CHICO isn’t).
BlankSlate had the reason on June 2:
Which dictionary? I’m not seeing it as the first or second definition anywhere.
Huh - I see it only in Collins, and as British English. I used to complain about it until BlankSlate posted that, so now I can go back to complaining.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/chica
Aw man, I was so excited to use TEFF for a moment
LENTICEL.
Was it just me or was Spelling Bee not particularly difficult today? Only words starting with three letters and a bunch of four-letter words followed by the same word with -ed added.
I thought it was pretty disappointing (though Bees with 275 points and ED, ING make me murderous).
Due to an extended brainfart, I didn’t get the pangram today until after I achieved Genius status. Which tells me that, yes, it was not exceedingly hard today.
I was working from Spelling Bee Buddy and saw that I had two words remaining; one six-letter and one eight-letter. I assumed the eight-letter word was the six-letter word with -ed added. So I was stuck looking for the right word.
I found Saturday’s and Sunday’s puzzles harder than usual, but today’s was easier. I got to genius pretty quickly, and Queen Bee, with a few basic hints, shortly after.
Connections also seemed quite easy today.
Today, my good friends, I got QB completely on my own without the buddy or any hints! I got to the point of knowing that I needed two (or maybe three) more four letter words. I got HEME by accident and it took me forever to finally figure out AHEM.
It’s so damn arbitrary which foreign foods count. NAAN is a word but DAHL isn’t?
If by “dahl” you mean Indian dishes based on pulses, it’s usually spelled dal.
I have much more frequently seen it spelled as dahl at Indian or Nepali restaurants, I’m pretty sure. A Google search for dahl shows a great deal of links to recipes.
We had a similar discussion about poppadoms, which is another Indian food word with spelling variations. That there is no single standard spelling in American English may be why the words aren’t acceptable for this game.
Unless it’s KEBAB. 
I had an unusual experience tonight. You may remember upthread that I posted about a similar game called Word Flower run by the Oregonian (local paper here in Oregon). The basic game is the same, but everything else, like scoring and hints, is different.
Anyway, new games for Word Flower go up at 9 p.m. and the Spelling Bee at midnight (our time). I don’t always play Word Flower, but I had 45 minutes to kill before the Bee, so decided to play it. When the Bee came up, I found that the two games shared 6 of the letters. They didn’t have the same index letter, but still there was a fair amount of overlap in the accepted words.
I’ve finished Word Flower (needed only three hints) and am still working on SB (haven’t gone to the hints yet). I’ve found WF to be easier than SB; it doesn’t seem to have as many obscure words.
Yeah, I wasn’t happy about that omission, either. I thought of cherry trees.
FYI, on Sunday we reached Genius for the 500th time out of 535 puzzles played.
My wife and I play together on our separate tablets, but on the same account, so we see each other’s entries. She usually stsrts them, and I usually finish. Since finding SBB, I try to go for QB every day. I’ve gotten 36 so far, most of them in the last few weeks.