One Word Wonder

There's got to be one every Saturday that I don't know what to do with....

edit: wow, i tried something almost as a joke, and it turned out to be right. no one was more surprised than me....

Ooooh, can you give us a little salt?

[2] A sprinkle of salt: The key word is "finalists".

[3] Hmmmm . . . I've been trying to make something of the two final letters in each word, but that's getting me nowhere . . .

[3] And as you apply that key word, ignore homophones. I was partially doing the correct path, but got distracted because of sound-alikes.

Then I tried the first two letters, since the "finalists" place first and second.

[5] I think I may have traveled down that path, too . . . how do I get on the right track?

[7] Hard to salt without going too far. Take the hint in [3] to limit your thoughts, but you don't directly use the limiting items. (See what I mean, that is probably no help)

[8] You got that last part right, but thanks for trying!

[9] I'm in the same boat. Tried last two letters, first two letters, homonyms. Even different names of nuts...cashews, filberts, etc.

here's my salt (pretty obscure) - the background picture should have been a picture of Sean Connery.... :)

[10] you need the whole words, not parts of them (but you don't need all of the words listed)

also, "nuts" is a secondary "clue" that will only make sense after you figure out the answer - it doesn't actually help you get the answer

That was tough! I need one after that!

I totally get [11] and [12], but only because I solved this already. [13] Is very salty...

[13] Whoa! Too salty!

[15][16] not salty enough for me to get the answer. sigh.

if someone would please TG me, I'll be happy to amend my comments.

I missed [13]. None of the other salt is clicking for me.

Rapture (two final lists) seems to fit the clue but that's not it. . .

[17] A pinch of salt: Only two of the words from the list can be "finalists".

was starting to go psycho there for a bit. thanks for helping my mental health [20]

[18] Me too. I guess this is a case of "ya snooze ya lose":(

an afterthought since i solved it. wish the puzzlemaker would have explained the choice of the background pic. guess i am missing the connection to the answer.

[23] It's just the crowd going nuts. Really has nothing to do with the puzzle solution.

Yeah, the puzzle lacks some polish. Probably good reason for it to have been unfeatured. Oh well.

[24] ty. thought it was just me. good puzzle tho. made me get the gray matter working on a saturday before going out to dig out of yet another snow storm.

[24] C'mon, you did this to me Murdoctor, throw out a pinch more so I can go to bed.

Wow. This was *terrible*. For one thing, I hate puzzles that include extraneous information solely for the sake of being extraneous; and for another, though it wasn't popular at the time when I said it about a hypercross of Philana's, there are some words that a solver really doesn't need to encounter on the way to solving a puzzle.

Well I finally got it with the hints but I think the background could have been something that more subtly pointed to the answer rather than looking like a sports event or a rock concert. A couple of Billy Crystal movies come to mind.

[11] I get the Sean Connery reference after I gave up and viewed the solution.

Who knew spelling would be so important! I picked the more common work, sounded out with "ists" instead of the one that was actually spelled correctly with the suffix