Hunch. In each of the last four years Cambridge picked its own word, never the word another dictionary had named weeks earlier, most recently 'parasocial' on 18 November 2025.
Resolves YES if by 31 December 2026 Cambridge Dictionary names 'maxxing' or another form with '-maxx' as its 2026 word of the year. Any other word is NO, and if the Cambridge page does not open, BBC News and Guardian reports of the announcement decide.
We looked for cases where Oxford named its word of the year after another big English dictionary had already named its own word that year. We found ten such years, from 2015 to 2025, and in each of them Collins went before Oxford.