Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this whole crossword puzzle thing lately, and let me tell you, it’s been quite a journey. I started off just trying to solve them, you know, like a normal person. I grabbed a newspaper, found the crossword section, and thought, “How hard can this be?” Turns out, pretty hard when you don’t know half the words they’re throwing at you.
I remember this one time I was stuck on “ADAGIO.” I mean, who even uses that word? Turns out, it’s a music term, meaning “slowly.” They usually play it at like 65-75 beats per minute, which I guess is slow for music folks. You can even use “adagio” to describe a whole piece of music played at that speed. Fancy, huh?
Then I started noticing these little tricks they use. Like, sometimes they’ll put “Var.” in the clue. That means the answer is spelled a bit weird. Or, if they use a foreign word or place in the clue, the answer is probably in that language too. For example, I saw “ETE” once, which is French for “summer.” The clue was something like “Summer, in the Sorbonne”. Sneaky, right?
After a while, just solving them wasn’t enough. I got this crazy idea to try and make my own. I’ve been tinkering with some software for a while now, trying to figure out how to build a decent crossword grid from scratch. It’s way harder than it looks. You gotta think about the word lengths, how they intersect, and making sure the clues are actually solvable.
I did find some cool resources online though. I stumbled upon some websites that have tons of tools to help you with words or create words from letters. Some even have lists of words in like a hundred categories, like, “Aircraft,” “Clothing,” and even “Flowers.” It’s insane.
- There’s this one site, but you cannot visit it directly, that I found that’s like the holy grail for crossword nerds, it’s basically a giant list of links to all the puzzles published in the last 24 hours. Super useful if you’re into that kind of thing.
- And I discovered a place, where you can find a lot of different crosswords, some are easy, some are hard. You can even pick if you want the American kind or the British kind.
Anyway, it’s been a fun little project. Still working on it, still learning. Maybe one day I’ll actually create a crossword puzzle that’s good enough for someone else to solve. Who knows? But for now, I’m just enjoying the ride, one word at a time. I am totally immersed in the joy of solving crossword puzzles, and if anyone has any good resources or tips, hit me up. I’m always looking for new stuff to check out!
