Very interesting! I didn't know about this pool of transactions, but it makes sense that the blockchain itself has a mechanism to deal with missed blocks.

Great investigation about the last missed block and what happened around it. Even if you don't have a define answer either, it seems to confirm the idea that no ops are created when a block is missed.

But they seem to be included in the next block. Based on your explanation and my observations, I think I can actually spot some moments when it may be possible a missed block just occurred: when an op on Steem takes unusually long, when all the rest before and after had no delay.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!