Okay, so today I decided to tackle the “Years and Years” clue from the NYT Crossword. I’ve been doing the crossword on and off for, well, years, and some days are definitely better than others. This one, though? It had me stumped for a good while.
My Process (and Struggles)
First, I stared at the clue. Just…stared. “Years and Years.” My brain immediately went to, like, historical periods. Were we talking about a specific decade? An era? Nope, nothing seemed to fit the number of spaces in the puzzle.
Then I tried to think of synonyms. “Ages and ages?” Still nothing. I even googled “Years and Years” to see if anything obvious popped up, like a famous book title or something. I saw that it’s a band, but that didn’t seem right either.
I moved on to other clues, hoping that getting some of the crossing letters would help. That’s a classic crossword strategy, right? Work on the easy stuff, and the hard stuff might magically become clearer.
After filling in a few more words, I came back to “Years and Years.” I had a couple of letters in place, and suddenly it hit me. It wasn’t about time at all!
It’s verb!
It means “ages”! I felt a big excitement after finish it!
