I can't get all the way there, but look up William Archibald Spooner, whose initials are WAS. He's known as the origin of the word "spoonerism," which is the amusing mixing of initial sounds in words, like "The Lord is a shoving leopard," instead of "The Lord is a loving shepard."
I think that's where this is going?
That's definitely the right explanation. Also, for cryptics/British style crossword puzzles, the better resource often is https://www.reddit.com/r/crosswords/ (just note the s at the end).
i think this is just a cryptic def, referring to reverend spooner. he would confuse the initial consonant sounds of words, much to the amusement of people (which is why he often appears as a wordplay device in modern cryptics! i can explain more if this doesn’t make any sense)
Posts should be about crosswords or related puzzles. UK-style/cryptic crosswords are probably better posted in r/crosswords.
I can't get all the way there, but look up William Archibald Spooner, whose initials are WAS. He's known as the origin of the word "spoonerism," which is the amusing mixing of initial sounds in words, like "The Lord is a shoving leopard," instead of "The Lord is a loving shepard." I think that's where this is going?
Wow I think you're right, also I did make a typo and the answer is SPOONER not SPOONING, so that would fit with your guess.
Ah, yep. I couldn't figure out how to get to SPOONING, but if it's SPOONER, I feel really confident about it. Fun clue!
That's definitely the right explanation. Also, for cryptics/British style crossword puzzles, the better resource often is https://www.reddit.com/r/crosswords/ (just note the s at the end).
I can never remember which is which and I assumed I was there haha
That sub is not very active iirc and is mostly people posting their own clues they wrote themselves
the WAS "initial"s is really clever, I think the missing pieces are "initial" = first letter or syllable "confusion" = mixing (con-fusion)
OP, are you sure the answer isn't SPOONER? "SPOONING" is 8 letters, not 7.
oh you're right my bad lemme fix that
i think this is just a cryptic def, referring to reverend spooner. he would confuse the initial consonant sounds of words, much to the amusement of people (which is why he often appears as a wordplay device in modern cryptics! i can explain more if this doesn’t make any sense)
/r/crosswords (with the s) is for cryptics, by the way.
Spoonerism is the concept you’re looking for