Ugh, that was supposed to be clued as "Deride," haha. If that helped you, more power to you! (Matt had a similar situation before. SOS will have our test-solver brigade to catch that!)
Joe 🤓15:04 · 2023-05-06T21:20:20.073Z
No joke. This was good.
boharr 3s · 2023-05-06T23:11:13.885Z
Thanks Mikey
KayW 🤓13:16 · 2023-05-06T23:01:28.903Z
Very clever -I am amazed that you found entries that worked so well! Still chuckling over 36a. Thanks Mikey
Yeah, this was wild. I was thinking of having the letters in any order, which was less than ideal. I realized when I saw SPICEOFLIFE go to "SCOFF" that I was like, "Whoa!" So I hammered away from that angle. I think OILPASTEL was the last to drop since "OAST" was crossword-esy, and I was kind of like, "Meh," but the fact that that made KILN worked was a win!
This took some time, haha. I use Aaronson's Wordlisted, which is vital, but all of the parsing has to be done by hand. So I needed to find entries with PILE in it (Wordlisted did that), and then remove all letters in PILE, and then have the resulting words spell out something (I did that, haha). And this was all done manually and took a while! Think it was worth it - if only I could've made it a 15-by-15! Too much fill was not meant to be!
Will, you are the master of using code to find your words. I think all of us (and I certainly am) are envious of that ability. I have spent MANY hours combing through words for something that fits certain constraints. You might have to teach us some day!!!!
Toast 🤓2:47 · 2023-05-08T00:56:13.943Z
Very elegant! I enjoyed the trivia and punning definitions.
I wonder if I'm the only one who initially passed up "SCOFF" as an alternate solution for 1a "Deride". It felt like a slightly bumpy fit. You SCOFF either intransitively or at something, while you deride something. I can scoff something (an utterance or my good-byes), but then I'm not deriding what I'm scoffing. "Mock", maybe?
Yeah, looking now, due to the direct object/indirect object situation, that becomes a thorny one to deal with. I needed something with "J" and I was happy to find SPICEOFLIFE/SCOFF early on there. So I think I agree with you here. Thanks for solving, though! (Oh, "de fun ride" - that was good, haha.)
Darth 🤓21:42 · 2023-05-08T03:12:41.195Z
Of course, it's 53! What a perfect follow up to your last puz! Love those puns -- You're such a card! haha
Well that was wild! I had three speedbumps: (1) I like Comic Sans so it didn't occur to me (2) I had RELEASE for Let Out so I had a tough time with the fill there (3) I originally just removed the PILE, not all the letters that would be use to spell PILE and ended up with some odd combos (is CRAPP a word, I know it with a single P, or a Comic I am fond of without the R - CAPP). In the end it revealed itself! So from one joker to another joker's Joker - NICE JOB, you're a real card, I mean I was on the deck laughing over some of your clues, some were real diamonds and you probably could use them in a club if you could sign a deal. Well better shuffle off to my tasks of the day. So glad I saw this at the last moment.
It was funny: when solving it, Will got to that clue about SANS and was like, "That's probably a joke - you saying you don't like someone is kind of off-brand for you," bahaha. Not the biggest fan of that font, though! (My favorite is Rockwell that all of my crossword programs are set to.) Thank you for solving!!!