Tio Hexblahday was an entertaining read not just because it showcased a new TO exploit but because it offered a wonderful narrative description of the brainstorming process of putting together something like this. And while I’ve never submitted something quite so, well, TO, I can vouch that I’ve been down a similar road many times. “Hmm, this is terrible. What tiny, slightly unique aspect can I play up? Huh, that feature’s weird, so what happens if I follow it down the rabbit hole?”

And then you bring in ideas to build around, and you go deeper down the rabbit hole and have to discard different parts of the scaffolding you built up (even as your failed ideas send you in wildly different directions), and eventually you’ve got something that seems to kind of hold up, but it’s nothing like what you expected when you started. But the thought process is entirely recognizable. That’s kind of how I felt when making Speeloxhuu and Opsablepsia. And to a lesser extent, Li’l Brudder.

Dare has absolutely succeeded at offering a delightful peek into the weird side of an Iron Chef’s mind. There are many paths to success in this contest, of course, but it often feels like this: just noodle around, riff on your weirder ideas, see if they lead to anything new (even if you have to throw away some of the stepping stones that got you there—whatever happened to using the Prestidigitation trick to gain a 1st level spell off-list?), and try to figure out when you’ve reached a point where it’s time to commit and make that submission. Even if you don’t go full TO, you might end up with something that you couldn’t have thought of from zero.