My Little Adventure with the “Place of Twist and Turns” Crossword
Alright, so today I decided to tackle this crossword I found, the theme was something like “place of twist and turns”. Sounded kinda interesting, maybe a bit tricky. You know how some themes are really straightforward and others make you scratch your head? This felt like it could be the head-scratching type.
So, I grabbed my pencil – yeah, I still use a pencil, makes it easier to fix my mistakes, and trust me, there are usually mistakes – and took a first look. Scanned the clues, down and across. Some looked easy enough, your standard fill-in-the-blanks. Others, especially the longer ones, seemed tied to that “twist and turns” idea. Okay, let’s dive in.
Started with the obvious ones. Like, 4 Across, “Opposite of black”, pretty sure that’s WHITE. Wrote that in. Then 1 Down, “Not off”, that’s gotta be ON. Easy peasy. Got a few corners filled this way, building a little foundation. You gotta start somewhere, right? Gets the confidence up a bit.
Then I hit a wall. Quite a few clues were just… blank stares from me. Especially the theme ones. Like 15 Across, “Confusing path”. My first thought was maybe PATHWAY? Didn’t fit. Then maybe GARDEN PATH? Too long. And 22 Down, “It has many passages but no doors”. Hmm. That one stumped me for a good while. My brain just wasn’t connecting the dots with the whole “twist and turns” thing yet.
I put it down for a minute, made some coffee. Sometimes stepping away helps. Came back, looked at the letters I already had in place. Okay, for 15 Across, I had _ A _ E. Suddenly, it clicked. MAZE! Of course! That fits the theme perfectly. Wrote that in quick before I forgot.
Getting MAZE was the key, honestly. It opened up a bunch of the Down clues crossing it. That M helped me figure out 10 Down, “Move slowly”, which turned out to be CRAWL (wait, no, the M didn’t help there, must have been the A… see? Mistakes happen). Actually, the Z in MAZE helped get 18 Down, “Sleepy sound”, which was ZZZ. Okay, progress!
And that clue, 22 Down, “It has many passages but no doors”? With the letters I got from the Across clues after figuring out MAZE and a few others, it looked like L A B Y R _ N T H. Ah, LABYRINTH! Another perfect theme answer. Felt good figuring that one out. It’s like a little victory every time a tricky clue falls into place.
- Got MAZE
- Got LABYRINTH
- Things started flowing better
There were still a couple of tricky spots. One clue was something like “Political turnaround”, which ended up being U TURN. Took me a bit, wasn’t immediately obvious it was that literal. Another one, I forget the exact clue, but the answer was MEANDER, like a river does. Fits the theme, but wasn’t the first word that popped into my head.
Finally, filled in the last square. Think it was part of SNAKE, for a clue like “Winding reptile”. Looked over the whole grid. Everything seemed to fit, the theme answers made sense – MAZE, LABYRINTH, U TURN, MEANDER, SNAKE. All related to twists and turns.
So yeah, that was my little session with the crossword today. Took a bit longer than I thought it would, thanks to those theme clues really making me think. But hey, got it done. Felt pretty satisfying, like I untangled something. It’s just a crossword, I know, but sometimes it’s the little challenges that make the day interesting. Good mental workout, anyway.
