u/Sufficient-Windiness

i'm not talking about starting words.

i notice from the wordle-bot that a few words come up pretty often as useful to narrow down the words. For example, the word 'tarot' is often a useful one, but not one I would really think of.

I am well aware that the best word to try will be a function of the answer, previous guesses, etc. But it seems to me like there are, probably, nonetheless a few good toolkit words that would be good to have up front and centre as ones to consider trying, but which might not naturally occur. Anyone have a list of these?

1. On the pdf you submit, would you italicise the themed clues? or use asterisks to mark them out from the normal clues? Or neither?
2. Do you generally put something in the notes box? For example, do you write a blurb explaining the theme or situating it in some way? Or just let it speak for itself if it does? Or anything else in that box?
3. Does the title you give the crossword matter at all (it's for a weekday, so i guess it won't be printed)
4. Is there any other other logisitical advice you can offer a first-time submitter, e.g. common pitfalls of part of the process?

Thanks so much in advance for your feedback! I have really appreciated the help I've gotten here already.

Obviously the ideal is a novel unheard of clue. But sometimes there are only so many to work with. When you search clue databases a lot have turned up dozens of times - cest la vie. To increase likelihood of acceptance, should I focus on clues that haven't been used recently in the paper I'm submitting to?

Or are they too close? They aren't anywhere near one another on the grid, and they are not parts of theme entries. Thank you.

And a question more generally for you:
What other strings like this have confused you in the past? I ask because knowing WHY a certain string stands for another really helps it stick in my mind .

Is 'The River Styx' legitimate (for NYT weekday)? Or does it need to lose the 'the' ? Thank you!

Thank you for your input!

Hi! One of my favourite crossword conceits is the misdirecting noun like this, where on one reading its an ordinary object (number), and on another it's a object that does something (a numb-er). Thus singer is a candle, sewer a seamstress…

I want to make a collection of these kind of misdirection words, specifically ones that fit the aforementioned profile. If you have any others, let me know!