Okay, so I was doing my usual crossword puzzle this morning, and I got completely stuck. I mean, completely stuck. Usually, I can breeze through the first few, you know, the easy ones. But this one clue just threw me for a loop.
The clue was “Paul, in Italian”. Just that. Four letters. And my mind went totally blank. I started by trying to think of famous Pauls. Paul McCartney? Nope, too long. Paul Rudd? Still too long. I was getting nowhere fast.
Then I tried a different approach. I figured, okay, “in Italian” means it’s probably an Italian name. So, I started running through Italian names in my head. “Mario,” “Luigi,” “Giovanni”… Nope, nope, and definitely nope. None of them were four letters and sounded anything like “Paul”.
I even tried saying “Paul” with a really bad Italian accent, hoping it would magically transform into a four-letter word. That didn’t work, obviously. It just made me feel silly.
I was about to give up, grab my phone, and just, you know…look it up. But then, it hit me. Like a lightning bolt. I almost shouted it out loud in the coffee shop!
“Paolo!”
Of course! How could I forget? It was so simple, and yet, so elusive for a good 20 minutes. That’s the thing with crosswords, isn’t it? Sometimes the easiest answers are the hardest to see.
