Thanks everyone for interesting answers. I suspect @robinhouston has it: better to build a long string than have many conditionals/queries

@RedEyedMonster thanks!

@huwtwo thanks!

I think mySQL queries are limited to 1GB in size. You won’t be anywhere close, will you? /via @robinhouston

the long query would be of the form “select [stuff] from words where word in (?, ?, … [5000 times])”, Sounds ok /via @robinhouston

@robinhouston no way – so maybe that’s the answer!

@LordGU thanks

@jpstacey ta, Chrimbo!

@robinhouston hm, maybe you’re right

@huwtwo alas I don’t know what that means! (am a bumbling amateur) Will Google tho…