What’s the significance of this list of words:
chid
chide
chin
chino
chinos
chins
chints
cion
cions
dims
dins
dint
dints
djin
djins
hide
hied
hins
hint
hints
into
ions
jins
join
joins
joint
joints
jots
mint
mints
minty
nide
nims
nosy
osmic
snide
snot
sonic
stoic
tonic
tons
xyst
xystoi
They’re in alphabetical order.
What do I win? 
One thing I notice is that they’re all made with letters from the set (skip two letters in the alphabet) NEXT THREE LETTERS, i.e., from the capitalized letters below:
ab CDE fg HIJ kl MNO pq RST uv WXY
However, no R or W turns up. Why is that?
The letters involve are the letters in MYTHIC COED HIJINKS, so maybe you’re fascinated by that phrase?
That’s definitely not just a coincidence, and will put you on the right track. (I mean the pattern, not the mythic coed hijinks). But I guarantee that the solution is a lot more satisfying than just “here’s some arbitrary off off on on on pattern with no other meaning, and here are some arbitrary words fitting that pattern”.
It seems that most of the words can be derived from (at least) one other word in the list, such that the only change needed is either:
Adding a letter
Removing a letter
Changing a letter
It seems in some cases words can only be derived by chaining these rules, but it seems that it only requires chaining at most twice for any given word in the list, assuming you pick the right word to derive from.
Examples of the two chain:
(xyst -> xystoi) APPEND O to end, APPEND I to end.
(tonic -> stoic) => APPEND S to front, REMOVE N.
(mint -> into) => REMOVE M, APPEND O to end.
(mints -> nims) => SWAP (m,n), REMOVE t
They’re all valid boggle words if you lay out the letters thusly:
CDE
HIJ
MNO
RST
WXY
eta: Not that I understand the significance of only using those 15 letters, or of laying them out in a pseudo-boggle pattern and then playing boggle with them. Boggle!
R and W are also landlocked in that pattern, which might by why they don’t appear.
So close…
Very well then… 
I went to here:
It was the only boggle solver I could find that would let me do a 5x5 grid. The grid is:
a b c d e
f g h i j
k l m n o
p z r s t
u v w x y
Note that I had to shove a Z in place of the Q, but I don’t think that makes a difference. Apparently Boggle omits the Q?
What follows is the resulting word list. It’s not 100% the same but that could be due to different dictionaries. Amazingly, the left 2 columns are never used. Wouldn’t have guessed that, especially with 2 vowels over there.
chid
chide
chin
chino
chinos
chins
dims
dins
dint
dints
hide
hied
hims
hint
hints
into
ions
join
joins
joint
joints
jots
mint
mints
minty
nosy
snide
snot
sonic
stoic
tonic
tons
Got it.
The boggle solver I used let you distinguish between q by itself and Qu as a single letter (which is what appears in the actual boggle game).