[SamBam]

I had the same thought, but agree with others that it's the core part of the game.

I've played about a dozen of these now, and very often I can see what one of the big outer clues is way before I've worked out the inner clues.

If I just solve the big outer clue, the game is done in 20 seconds or so, and I'm not sure I'd keep coming back.

Rather, the challenge is to use what I've understood to work out the inner clues. This is tricky because I've got to keep more in my head at the same time, Towers of Hanoi-style. Or I sometimes write it out.

I have my notes in an open notepad from yesterday, so I can reproduce my thinking without spoiling today's:

[scold, with "at"]: hmmm, no idea.

[something golfers' apparently [scold, with "at"]]: not sure...

["there[something golfers' apparently [scold, with "at"]]]: Ah, ok, got it: [there[X]] has to be "therefore." So I see [something golfers' apparently [X]] is going to be "fore."

So if "fore" = "Something golfers apparently [X]" and X is [scold, with "at"], I can see that innermost one must be "yell."

[4rt]

i think they're saying it shouldn't be counted as a fail, rather than it should be accepted as an answer at that point.

if not i agree with you. it'd be nice if it flashed green or something around the entire set of brackets but made you still answer all the sub-clues though.

[zem]

yeah, it would be really nice if it turned the brackets around the word you guessed green and then filled it in automatically once the subclues were solved

[echelon]

Eat it and make the user think it's a failure, but don't count it negatively towards the score.

"If you answer early, we'll ignore your guess without letting you on."

[PebblesRox]

Or maybe it could give some kind of extra credit for guessing a clue early. Or it could accept it, but still make you guess the interior clues, but when you get to the one, you already guessed, it shows it as already solved.