The list of examples in the 7-11 range seemed to have a high number of pairs that have strangely coincidental meanings somehow. I thought maybe that was because they are hand-picked, but looking at the complete list, I honestly see more of those than I'd expect. I'm not sure why it's surprising, there's no actual pattern in a pair, and it's not surprising that lots of pairs of words have some way to connect them. But it still feels surprising when looking at them. It's like a lot of high scoring pairs of words share some kind of root, even though high scoring should mean high dissimilarity.
Anyway, great post. Weekend coding projects looking for anagrams and palindromes and boggle solutions are often rewarding for me, above and beyond just being fun.