Okay, so, I’ve been trying to get better at crosswords lately. I’m not, like, good good, but I enjoy them. It’s a nice way to kill some time and feel a little smarter, you know? Today, I decided to really give it a go and see if I could actually finish one without cheating (too much!).
I grabbed the newspaper, found the crossword section, and started scanning. “Excuses” was the theme. Okay, interesting. Could be fun, could be tricky. I sharpened my pencil—gotta have a sharp pencil for a crossword, it’s the rules!—and dove in.
I always start with the shorter words, the ones that seem obvious. So, I looked for three-letter or four-letter clues. Those are usually my gateway into the bigger words.
- Found a “___ out” (as in to evade a situation): It had to be “cop”, right? C-O-P. Boom! First word down.
- Then, “Not in”: Easy peasy. O-U-T.
Slowly but surely I filled in more and more of the little words. Each one that clicked gave me a little rush, like, “Yeah, I’m a genius!” (Even though, let’s be real, some of those were total guesses that just happened to work.)
Then, it got harder. There were longer words, and, well, I am not a walking dictionary.
I kept going, taking breaks to stare blankly at the ceiling, trying to wrack my brain. Sometimes, I’d just put in letters that felt right, even if I wasn’t 100% sure.
The Hard Part
There was this one long one across the middle… ten letters, something about a made-up story. My brain was blank. I skipped it, worked on the surrounding words, hoping the crossing letters would give me a clue. And they did! Finally, I figured out it had to be a made-up reason for somthing…”ALIBI”! Yes! That was a major victory.
I’m not gonna lie, there were a couple of times I had to, ahem, consult a friend (aka, the internet). But hey, I’m still learning! And I did finish it! It took me a while, definitely longer than those crossword pros you see in the movies, but I did it. And you know what? It felt pretty good. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try another one. But maybe not. We’ll see.
