#'_sand al_' or '_sand a l_' sand something. thousand something. ampersand something. hm. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

coquelicoq · 2 years ago

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one specific thing that i'd like to get better at w/r/t crossword theme generation is identifying not just words that contain a specific set of letters but phrases that contain a specific set of letters. for instance. i'm working on a theme right now in which types of shoes are going to be hidden within the long answers. for some, there are longer single words that contain those letters (e.g., toolBOOTh, MOCha, conFLATe), but for others i'm going to have to go over a word boundary, which takes me out of the territory of Things That Can Eventually Be Found If You Read The Dictionary For Long Enough (my usual strategy lol). the problem is i have absolutely no idea how to get better at this. but in good news, today i came up with both "muscle atrophy" and "oracle at delphi" for "cleat" and "warts and all" for "sandal" almost right away. so...i just need to keep doing that? somehow? how are other constructors doing this all the time??

#and how was anybody doing this before the 'contains' search function on thefreedictionary.com existed??#cruciverbs #my posts #i went on my crossword theme generation walk today and came up with nine theme ideas. NINE.#and i would have done more but i had to stop just bc if i came up with any more i wouldn't be able to hold them in working memory #long enough to get home and write them down #i should really take my phone with me on these walks lol #turns out one of the nine is an idea i've come up with before but haven't followed through on yet. maybe i should do that one next #i gotta focus on the shoe one first though and unfortunately i won't be able to use 'warts and all' unless i can come up with a second #answer containing sandal. because 'sandal' will be in a rebus square which means it'll be part of both an Across and a Down answer #but i really want to use warts and all :(#and i kind of think the second answer shouldn't include 'and' because that feels repetitive #so what are my options? '_s andal_' are there any common english expressions containing the word andalusia? i don't think so #'_sa ndal_' illegal word-initial consonant cluster so that's out. '_san dal_' are there any spanish saints with names beginning in dal-?#'_sand al_' or '_sand a l_' sand something. thousand something. ampersand something. hm.#'_sanda l_' sanda at the end of a word is not super promising #i think '_sand al_' is my best bet so now i gotta think of things related to sand that start in al-. or things that start with al- that #there are a thousand of #sand alloy. sand aluminum. sand algae. terrible. painfully bad.#this is what i need to get better at but idek where to start

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