“Hearing Things”

[Cinny]

Finally solved and confirmed on Crosshare!
I had the first step, but needed a nudge from cpjohnson to finally see the last step.

[Bird Lives]

The answer was GRAFT – a way you might put things together. (Chicagoan Kay W. noted that in her town what gets put together are politicians and bribes.)

For each of the five entries ending in THING, you had to remove THING and then take the remaining part phonetically and graft it onto another word in the grid to make another word or phrase. The homophone for SEE(thing) is SEA, which combines with GULL.

SEE(thing) —> SEA GULL
TEE(thing) —> T REX
BA(thing) —> BAY AREA
TI(thing) —> THAI FOOD
SOME(thing) —> SUM TOTAL
The first letters of those completing words spell GRAFT.
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Here are the forty-seven solvers:
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As I said apologetically in my intro on Monday, a major flaw in the construction is that there are some ambiguities – words that had more than one reasonable complement. SEE could have paired up with FOOD; TI with BAR or BASIL; TEE with TOTAL. It might have helped that the clue for the correct word contains a hint that should confirm that you've gotten the right one. If the word paired with FOOD were SEE, the clue for FOOD would have been something like "Scampi, clams casino, lobster rolls, etc." Instead the clue was “Curry, lettuce wraps, satay, etc.” and the paired phrase was THAI FOOD.

Thanks to all.

[DrTom]

Jay, we have all been there. That is part of the "stuff happens" camp. It was a fun puzzle and challenging enough that you had to think before the AHA. With the extra words, well there was NO THING you could have done it was NO PROBLEM.

[whimsy]

I originally got off on the wrong foot with ba-gull and see food, thinking we'd end up with a whole meal in front of us!
Thanks, Jay!

[TeamDoubleTow]

Oooh, we were definitely on the right path! At some point I think we had all of these but we came up with others too so didn't have this combination. In fact the one we thought was the strongest was lasso for tithing. That was the hardest for us to not include along with total.

Thanks for the puzzle!

[Dplass]

I originally got off on the wrong foot with ba-gull and see food, thinking we'd end up with a whole meal in front of us!
Thanks, Jay!

Same. I couldn't ferret out all the right combos and always got gibberish. Ironically (I work for a tech company based in San Francisco), it was BAY AREA I never saw...

Thanks for the puzzle!

[BarbaraK]

As I said apologetically in my intro on Monday, a major flaw in the construction is that there are some ambiguities – words that had more than one reasonable complement. SEE could have paired up with FOOD; TI with BAR or BASIL; TEE with TOTAL. It might have helped that the clue for the correct word contains a hint that should confirm that you've gotten the right one. If the word paired with FOOD were SEE, the clue for FOOD would have been something like "Scampi, clams casino, lobster rolls, etc." Instead the clue was “Curry, lettuce wraps, satay, etc.” and the paired phrase was THAI FOOD.

Thanks to all.

I assumed that the new answers had to work with the clues, so I didn't see any ambiguity or reasonable alternates. The only one I found a bit odd was Bay Area, but I don't know enough about California geography to feel strongly that that's not as spot on as the others. But a shore bird is a seagull; Wally in Toy Story is a T. Rex (I assume, haven't seen the movie); curry, satay, etc are Thai foods, and the final tally is the sum total.

[HeadinHome]

Interesting. I had moved the substitute words into their new location (to replace “thing”) — the red letters are the first letters of each (using BA-GULL (bagel, G), TEE-REX (T-Rex, R), SOME-ALI (Somali, A), SEE-FOOD (seafood, F), and then TI-(THING) had me stumped forever… TI-BASIL? (Thai basil, B) TI-BAR? (tie bar, B). Obviously this was leading clearly to GRAFT so I never thought to question any of my choices… but where the heck was the T going to come from?? And why was I getting two very nice “B” options? (Too bad there wasn’t a reasonable T option for TI(thing) … two legitimate paths to the same answer would have been amazing!)

[rjy]

I had taken a different angle at the outset, not by pairing the word with another that goes with it (T REX, SEA GULL), but by finding words that match other clues in the puzzle.

I could not back out of this rabbit hole, because of what I thought was a brilliantly ambiguous clue:
59D: Boat location for Isaac —> BAR
As soon as I realized SEE could be SEA, which is the location OF the boat, not IN the boat, I could not let go of this approach. I thought “Man! amazing clueing by Jay!”

BAY sounds like BAE, which could be a 1A answer
TI sounds like TIE, which could be 54A Wrapper’s delight (tieing a ribbon), or THAI for 43A Curry, lettuce wraps, satay
SOME sounds like SUM, so 53D TOTAL
TEE was maaaaybe 34A Take 5: “T” as in sports for timeout, or maybe the REX for T-REX. Could not get this one to click.

So so close, so clever, but did not result in anything. Finally got a nudge to prune this path a bit.

P.S. Separate rabbit hole: nearly all the words had anagrams of themselves or their homonyms:
TEE -> ETE
TI -> YET (tye)
SEE -> ESA (sea)
BA -> ABE (bae)
Just. Couldn’t. Find. SOME.

Thoroughly enjoyed the journey, Jay, even the unintended detours!

[Bird Lives]

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Interesting. I had moved the substitute words into their new location (to replace “thing”) — the red letters are the first letters of each (using BA-GULL (bagel, G), TEE-REX (T-Rex, R), SOME-ALI (Somali, A), SEE-FOOD (seafood, F), and then TI-(THING) had me stumped forever… TI-BASIL? (Thai basil, B) TI-BAR? (tie bar, B). Obviously this was leading clearly to GRAFT so I never thought to question any of my choices… but where the heck was the T going to come from?? And why was I getting two very nice “B” options? (Too bad there wasn’t a reasonable T option for TI(thing) … two legitimate paths to the same answer would have been amazing!)

If only I had put in a TACK or maybe a TANNIC or TRAIT.

[HeadinHome]

or TASS. ha ha ha

[woozy]

It might have helped that the clue for the correct word contains a hint that should confirm that you've gotten the right one. If the word paired with FOOD were SEE, the clue for FOOD would have been something like "Scampi, clams casino, lobster rolls, etc." Instead the clue was “Curry, lettuce wraps, satay, etc.” and the paired phrase was THAI FOOD.

Oh... clever. Didn't see that and was a little too subtle (although I guess it shouldn't have been). I was going to complain but that makes the puzzle legit.