[VisD]

yes, die has input. It's not a red herring. It's important in some way. Poem explains why.

If you have more words than you should need, clearly you need to throw out some there is a pattern to the correct words which, once you notice, will allow you to eliminate the wrong words (or some of them - might still need to do a bit of guess and check)

once you have all the words - find another pattern

in conclusion: all the flavortext on this level is not just for fun, they're important hints