Wildcard in searches

I think it’s only my stubborn hope that keeps me from taking the manual at its word when it speaks of “Wildcard for prefix or suffix.”

That is, wildcards function only as prefix or suffix, right? (No chance of using them with characters before AND after? For example, using “b*bble” to find “bubble” and “bobble” ?)

Correct. The search index is not setup to support wildcards within a word.

You can do that type matching using “Matches regex” with a smart folder. For example, “b.bble” or “b[uo]bble”. However, this only works on individual properties such as the title, not on the full text of the file.