Well first of all I'd NEVER say that, I always find your puzzles fun and educational; the title, mechanism and "solution" all tie together and my resolution is not "never again" but "as often as possible". That said I am having trouble with the last A. It came down to AMBER/APED/AWE and I could make none of the RE? words fit. Of course looking back now I see I had RENEW (seemed odd it was a theme word and an answer when actually I should have has REHEARSE) That would change my RENEW for GRIND (I thought sure you originally had FINE in the grid but had to abandon it) but still leaves REOPEN for AMBER/APED/AWE. I also struggle with REIRON as a synonym for GRIND. I tried to force some French on you and look for a synonym for RETRAIT (and since it means, among other things, walkout it could have been LEFT aboard ship). Luckily I did this on paper so it was MARKABLE for this SPLENDENT example of a meta but I'll stop now and POSE for a small break.
Thanks. The first A-word (no, not that A-word) was ANSWER (from PLY), the second was AMBER (from SIN). It was a total coincidence that the themers leading to these two were symmetrically located. And now I have added a new word to my French vocabulary. I knew "retraite" since I took mine four years ago, but not the one without the "e."
So REOPEN was not one of the words nor was RENEW . I do see that in the usage as outlined they do not make "new" words they just qualify the word they are attached to (though RENEW is a little less clear). Your words are all completely new, i.e. SIDE and RESIDE have no common definitions or synonyms, nor does VEAL and REVEAL, etc. Luckily I got enough of them to get the meta, knowing what it had to be from the letters I had and the prompt. I suppose I could argue about REMEMBER if my last name were Bobbitt, but it's not...
Laura M ๐ค8:02 ยท 2023-11-06T18:39:00.559Z
Definitely not my (RE)action, I always love your puzzles!
merlinnimue ๐ค6:45 ยท 2023-11-06T19:48:45.050Z
that took me way too long, went down a bunch of rabbit holes ading entries in other ways before the 17a dropped and i alized the metanism... and even then i had trouble finding the matching words so i had to verse-engineer the sponse... doesn't feel good to be on bottom but someone's gotta be there... much spect to all you genius solvers and setters
MatthewL ๐ค7:42 ยท 2023-11-06T20:45:42.129Z
Really misunderstood the mechanism at first, but then finally figured it out. Thanks Jay!
whimsy ๐ค10:32 ยท 2023-11-06T21:26:50.861Z
Never would say this! I would commend this to anyone!
Thanks for your fun ways with words, Bird!
LOL very good Jay but the only context where I would say that about your puzzles is..."oh no I need the nudges? NOT AGAIN!". I had the correct idea but was trying to RE-parse existing entries rather than append anything to them.
Very spiffy indeed. Needed the third nudge to get me out of trying to re-parse other entries that were already in the grid (RE-lie, etc.). Fun one, thanks.
SamKat9 ๐ค7:41 ยท 2023-11-10T16:32:03.175Z
Thank you for the clever puzzle! Happy to solve another one from you!