Praises to the heavens

As a detective trying to solve the mystery of “Praises to the heavens” as a crossword clue, my first step would be to think about potential synonyms, associations and clues. I know that “heavens” often refers to the sky, which in turn can be associated with the animal kingdom. As I brainstormed animal-related verbs that might be associated with praise or exaltation, one word immediately came to mind: lionize. To lionize someone is to treat them as a celebrity or to highly esteem them, which certainly fits the description of praising them to the heavens. I would then double-check the other letters in the puzzle and do a quick cross-reference to make sure it followed the structure of the rest of the puzzle before feeling confident enough to fill it in as the answer. Ultimately, my intuition and understanding of language, as well as my association-making skills helped me to successfully solve the crossword clue of “Praises to the heavens” with the answer of “LIONIZES“.