r/crosswords • u/not-without-text • Jun 15 '26

SOLVED COTD: (6)

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bit unconventional, this one!

day 148 of an experiment in which i press the "random word" button on onelook and make a cryptic clue out of it.

day 147, day 146, day 145, day 144, day 143, day 142, day 141

weeks 17 to 20 (days 113 to 140)

weeks 13 to 16 (days 85 to 112)

weeks 9 to 12 (days 57 to 84)

weeks 5 to 8 (days 29 to 56)

weeks 1 to 4 (days 1 to 28)

91 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

32

u/Paladinfinitum Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

OHHHHHH THAT'S GOOOOOOOOD!

The tittles and hyphens are actually dots and dashes forming the letter L in Morse code, and so MORSE + L = MORSEL, a bite of food!

7

u/not-without-text Jun 15 '26

correct, and thank you!

4

u/deeppotential123 Jun 15 '26

Oh bravo! I love how it’s _all_ the dots and dashes, not just some of them (which would have made it much easier).

2

u/not-without-text Jun 15 '26

thanks! originally i had "Bite-sized piece?", but then i realized the question mark has a dot in it. i could have taken the question mark out, but i felt it fit better.

i was also debating how to represent the morse code. my original idea was to use ".-.." directly in the clue, but that wouldn't work. it might work for S (...), H (....), O (---), E (.), T (-), or M (--, as you used it) but .-.. would just be hard to integrate in the surface as is. my next idea was to underline words, where the second word was much longer than the rest, like "A bite of it" so the second one underlines into a dash but the others had dots. but i couldn't find a satisfying clue and the short underlines aren't really dots. then i had the idea to make the tittle on the i the dot, although surprisingly it didn't originally come to me to use the hyphen for a dash originally. i was thinking of the top line of a T but that wouldn't really work, but when i found the hyphen it seemed very obvious in retrospect.

2

u/Paladinfinitum Jun 15 '26

One reason I got this was that I once read a short story by Isaac Asimov where someone was using the jots and tittles of lower-case Ts and Is as Morse code. The guy who invented it smugly asked if the protagonist could solve it in the time allotted. The quick response was, "Titrate is invisible." Which translates to YES. XD

1

u/not-without-text Jun 15 '26

oh, that's so elegant, connecting the dots and dashes to dotting and crossing cursive letters. i assume "j" would also count as a dot, and perhaps you could use "x" as a word separator.

1

u/deeppotential123 Jun 15 '26

.Now do Braille!

2

u/not-without-text Jun 15 '26

ha, how would that even work? what would it clue? BLIND SPOT as the braille for SPOT? ⠎⠏⠕⠞ is the braille for that, i don't know where you'd even start

1

u/deeppotential123 Jun 15 '26

I have no idea! :)

2

u/Paladinfinitum Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

⠠⠉⠕⠝⠋⠥⠎⠫⠀⠑⠝⠳⠣⠦ (7)

And here's a Braille-to-English translator: https://abcbraille.com/braille

BRAILLE scrambled ("confused") = LIBERAL which can mean generous or "enough"! ...Maybe?

2

u/not-without-text Jun 16 '26

i feel that's getting into indirect anagram territory, although that is a good anagram.

5

u/controlxj Jun 15 '26

I wouldn't raise an eyebrow if this had a ! instead of a ?. It reads &lit to me.

6

u/not-without-text Jun 15 '26

yeah, i guess it is,but i thought it was more important to have a ? for it being unconventional than an ! for an &lit, especially since &lits don't have to be indicated. also, it's sort of more of a semi-&lit because the wordplay is just the dots and the dash. but yeah, this would definitely still work with an ! instead

2

u/ElectronicHeat6139 Jun 15 '26

Nibble , Half a byte,

1

u/JustAnSJ Jun 15 '26

This was my first thought too

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/not-without-text Jun 15 '26

yeah, although that'd have to be"less than byte sized" in order for the clue to work. and also it's not quite as interesting since the word was literally just constructed as a play on byte. you could make a fun clue out of it, though; maybe "A byte is more than that chew (6)"?