Okay, so I was messing around with crossword puzzles the other day, as I usually do, and I got totally stumped by this one clue: “punishment”. I stared at it, and stared at it, but nothing! So I decided to get all methodical about it. Time to bring out the big guns.
My Little Experiment
First, I grabbed a pen and paper – old school, I know. I jotted down the clue and started brainstorming every single word I could think of that’s even remotely related to “punishment”.
- Penalty
- Fine
- Sentence
- Retribution
- Comeuppance
- Discipline
I had a pretty good list going, but none of them seemed to fit the number of letters in the puzzle. It was like, a seven-letter word or something. Ugh.
So, I figured, okay, maybe I need to think outside the box. I started thinking about different types of punishment. Like, what do they do to people in jail? What did my mom do to me when I was a kid and broke a vase? (Timeouts, mostly. And lots of yelling.)
I even googled “types of punishment” – don’t judge, we all do it!—I looked up some synonyms.
And then, BAM! It hit me. It was something like ‘Reproof”. I typed it into the crossword, and it fit perfectly! I felt like a genius, seriously. A total word-nerd champion.
The whole process was kind of fun, actually. It’s like being a detective, but instead of solving crimes, you’re solving…word puzzles. Anyway, that’s my little story about how I finally cracked that “punishment” clue. Pretty exciting stuff, huh?
