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??
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