Okay, so today I was trying to figure out this crossword puzzle, and man, was it a doozy! I’m not usually one for word games, but my buddy challenged me, and, well, I’m not one to back down from a challenge. The clue I got stuck on was “trouble”. Just “trouble”. How vague is that?!
First, I stared at it. Like, really stared. I thought, “Okay, ‘trouble’…what could it be?” My mind was totally blank. I tried to think of synonyms, like “problem,” “issue,” “difficulty,” but none of those seemed to fit the number of spaces I had in the puzzle.
Then, I started brainstorming words associated with trouble. You know, like “danger,” “risk,” “mess”…still nothing. It was driving me nuts! I even googled just synonyms for “trouble” to see if I could find any words that were the correct number of letter and had the one letter I had already filled in. I scrolled through like a hundred, No dice.
I decided to take a break. Sometimes you just gotta walk away, right? I got up, made some coffee, paced around my kitchen. I came back and looked at the puzzle with fresh eyes.
Suddenly, I spotted another clue that intersected with “trouble”. I had not filled in any letters for it yet. One of its letters would go in the word “trouble”.
It was pretty easy to determine the answer to this short cross-word, and after I filled it in, I got the second letter to the “trouble” cross-word.
- Now I know the second letter of the “trouble” word, plus the total number of letters that would make up the word.
I went back to that list of “trouble” synonyms I found on google and scrolled through it again. Looking for a word that was the correct length, and had the new found letter, in the correct position.
Boom! I found it. It was “ado”! I never would have guessed it and I still don’t get it. I had to search for the definition online, and there it was clear as day, “trouble or difficulty”.
I slotted it in, and bam, it fit perfectly! It was such a simple word, but my brain just couldn’t get there at first. It felt great to finally crack it, even if it took me way longer than it probably should have.
It’s moments like these that teach me about two things:
- Don’t be afraid to walk away and come back later. It helps!
- Use the help of all kinds of resources.
