Hypercross: Rise shall Ye, Ast?

Oh I got first!! My first hyper first! Yay! Now, time for bed...

was doing great until i got to Homer. Any salt for him?

[2] What does Homer usually say when he realizes he's done something dumb? Three letters; homonym for his utterance used for the answer is 5 letters.

Once I figured out the theme, it was a piece of... cake... (not salt).

I felt like a crummy heel for getting #1 backwards. Enough loafing around, though... I *need* to go back to work.

[3] t/y

took me a while to realize something was missing from that calendar in #7. I was trying to squeeze in "year" to the answer

[5] Thank you!

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[3]that helped!

Funny, I always thought it was the uncooked stuff that had to "rise".

I don't have any ideas for #4. Any help?

Never mind - finally clicked.

I found out who the runner is in #3, but I can't figure out the word. Any help?

[13] Looks like he'll be finishing in first place!

Any help with 11? EDIT: Post & solve

[14] Thanks. I've got them all filled out but they're still not correct. No idea where I went wrong.

Fun!!

I feel so stupid. I haven't go #1, #3 #4 or #11. DOH!

#4 isn't clicking for me. Maybe because I don't know what that Thing is.

update- Got it.

Fun! Thanks! (Some of my favorites, too!)

This was fun!

I was trying to make this a lot harder than it was....clever puzzle.