The way DDG gets results is complex, and it uses a variety of APIs (in addition to our own stuff) to do so. As a result, we can't easily filter results because we don't have easy access to the result html. 

Hey Guest - thankfully safesearch in DuckDuckGo is easy to disable for adults, and without needing to save cookies either. Simply set your homepage/bookmark to http://duckduckgo.com/?kp=-1 and your searches will all have safesearch disabled by default.

Otherwise, I agree that filtering sites is better than the terms since there are kid-friendly educational sites out there I'm sure have words that would be potentially banned. Hey, at least DuckDuckGo isn't going to turn into a fundamentalist-Christian-owned site that has a permanent safesearch that can't be disabled (like what happened to the search engine Clusty when they were bought out and changed to Yippy - http://search.yippy.com/censorship)... at least I certainly hope it isn't.

Whoops. Fixing link. http://search.yippy.com/censorship

I just searched for a Japanese recipe and was rudely surprised to find the results were filtered. I think SafeSearch should be disabled by default if it's going to assume nasty things about me like this...

I searched for Dick Tracy, famous cartoon and comic strip character and I was given several results relating to basketball player Tracy McGrady. I was confused at first until I realized that DDG had omitted Dick from the search keyword, so I went into the settings and changed it for that particular search. Which got me thinking, why isn't a safesearch on/off switch available on the floating panel. It's kind of a hassle to have to continually go back to the settings page just to turn the safesearch feature on and off.

This censorship-by-default is one of my biggest problems with DDG.