Okay, so, today I wanted to mess around with one of those crossword puzzles. I’ve seen people do them on the train, in the newspaper, and figured, why not give it a shot? It seemed like a fun way to kill some time and maybe learn some new words.
I started by just grabbing a random crossword from one of those free puzzle sites online. Nothing too fancy, just a standard beginner-level puzzle. I opened it up and stared at it for a good few minutes. Honestly, it looked a bit intimidating at first with all those blank squares staring back at me.
The first thing I decided to do was just read through all the clues. I skipped around, trying to find ones that looked easy or that I might already know the answer to. There were a few fill-in-the-blank clues, and those seemed like the best place to start. I mean, who doesn’t love a good fill-in-the-blank, right?
- I filled in a few of those, like “_ and Jerry” which was obviously “Tom”. That was a nice little confidence booster.
- Then I tackled some of the other short ones, like three or four-letter words. I figured those would be easier to guess, and they were, for the most part. I got a few of those filled in, and it felt pretty good.
After that, I started looking at the clues that intersected with the words I had already filled in. That helped a lot because then I had at least one letter to go off of. It was like a little puzzle within a puzzle, trying to figure out which word fit both clues.
There were definitely some tricky ones, though. Some of the clues were a little vague or had multiple possible answers, but I found that the more letters I filled in, the easier it became to guess the rest. Sometimes I had to erase my answer and try a different word, but that’s all part of the fun, I guess.
The Final Stretch
Slowly but surely, I started filling in more and more of the grid. It was a pretty cool feeling, watching the puzzle come together piece by piece. And yeah, I did learn some new words along the way.
In the end, I actually managed to solve the whole thing! It took me a while, I won’t lie, but I did it. And I gotta say, it was a pretty satisfying feeling. I felt a bit smarter, a bit more accomplished. Definitely going to try another one of these soon. Maybe next time I’ll even try a harder one.
