How does a person get to 40 million without cheating?

Play 1 million levels.

I would agree. Some cheating must be going on. Checking today 3rd June 2023, the world lead has 405 millions words.

This appears at least a factor of 20 higher than is realistically possible.

At best a good Wordscaper can complete the average level in eg 20s. Add another 10s to collect the points etc. we are looking at around 30 words/ min on average. 1800/hour. Let’s say someone plays religiously 12hrs/day. Around 20000words per day. Every day for a year = around 7-8million words per year. How long has the game been running? Certainly not the 50-60years it would take to hit the current world lead of 405million!!

So something is wrong somewhere, which is disappointing.