My Breakup with Crosswords
Okay, so let’s talk about crosswords. For a long time, I was really into them. Like, properly into them. It started years ago, probably picked up a newspaper someone left behind, saw the grid, and thought, “Yeah, I could do that.” It felt like a good way to keep the brain sharp, you know? Learn a few words, kill some time on the commute.
So, I got into a routine. Every morning, grab the paper, flip straight to the puzzle page. Sometimes I’d do the quick one, sometimes the cryptic if I felt brave. Weekends were for the big ones, the Sunday specials. I’d sit there with my coffee, pen in hand (always pen, never pencil, felt more committed), and just chip away at it. Felt good finishing one, like a small victory for the day.
But then, things started to change. It wasn’t sudden, more like a slow drift. I began noticing patterns, the same old clues popping up again and again. ‘Area’ always seemed to be ‘ERA’ or ‘LEA’. Four-letter word for ‘Hawaiian garland’? You guessed it. It started feeling less like a brain exercise and more like just remembering a specific set of crossword-only words and tricks.
The real kicker for me was the obscure stuff. Suddenly, it wasn’t about clever wordplay anymore. It felt like you just had to know things. Random bits of trivia, like:
- Some third-century poet nobody’s ever heard of.
- The name of a specific river in a country I couldn’t even point to on a map.
- Endless variations on Roman numerals or chemical symbols.
Honestly, who cares? It stopped being fun. It felt like homework, like needing to memorise lists of state capitals or obscure actors from the 1940s just to fill a grid. Where’s the cleverness in that? It’s just gatekeeping knowledge, almost.
I found myself getting more frustrated than satisfied. Spending twenty minutes stuck on one clue, only to find out it was the name of some minor character from an opera I’d never seen? Nah. My time’s worth more than that. It started feeling like a chore, something I had to do rather than wanted to do.
So, I just… stopped. Cold turkey. One day I realised I hadn’t even looked at the puzzle page for a week, and I didn’t miss it. Not one bit. My brain doesn’t feel any less sharp. I still read, I still learn things, I just don’t need a grid and a set of increasingly annoying clues to do it.
Maybe they work for some people, keep them entertained. Good for them. But for me? I’m out. I’ve moved on. Found other ways to spend those ten minutes or that hour on a Sunday. It just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. Simple as that.
