Funny, for me spelling is least likely to be an exception to the rule. If I misspelled a word in my query then I meant it to be misspelled ... I was probably trying to track down a specific article in which I knew the word to be misspelled, or else I wanted to know how common the misspelling was. And my experience is that Google hates me a little more every year.

Meanwhile, the synonym replacement is actually helpful sometimes. I wish I could turn off one without the other: that's why "verbatim mode" isn't going to do it for me.