Alright, so I tackled the NYT crossword today. Saw the title mentioned ‘fresh perspective’ and thought, okay, let’s see what that’s about. Settled in, got my usual setup ready, you know how it is. Just wanted to dive in and get it done.
Started off in the usual spot, top-left corner. Always feels like the right place to begin. Got a few of the short across answers pretty quickly. Felt like I was cruising for a bit. Built up some confidence, you know? Filled in a few downs that crossed those ones. Standard stuff. Things seemed pretty normal at first.
Then I started hitting some weirdness. Some clues just felt… off. Like the answers didn’t quite fit the space, or the clues were trying too hard to be clever. That’s usually a sign there’s some kind of trick involved. Spent a good chunk of time just staring at a few sections, especially in the middle. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it for a while.
Hitting the Wall (and then breaking through)
Got properly stuck on a longer answer. The clue seemed straightforward, but the letters I had just weren’t working. Reread the clue like ten times. Tried different words. Nothing. It was seriously annoying. Almost put it down right there.
But then, I noticed a pattern with a couple of the answers I was sure about. They seemed related to that ‘fresh perspective’ idea. It wasn’t about changing letters or anything fancy this time. It was more about how you read the clue itself, or maybe how the answer was physically placed in the grid. Took me a bit to see it.
Once that clicked, it was like a dam broke. Suddenly those weird clues made sense. Went back to the ones that had me stumped and bam, bam, bam, they started falling into place. Had to literally look at some squares differently, kinda like the theme suggested. Felt pretty clever when I finally got the hang of it, not gonna lie.
Finished up the rest after that. Still had a couple of tricky spots, the usual obscure trivia or wordplay, but the main hurdle was understanding that theme gimmick. It really did require looking at things from a new angle.
So yeah, got it done. Took a bit longer than my average Tuesday, mostly because figuring out the theme slowed me down. But it felt good to wrestle with it and come out on top. Always satisfying to fill in that last square. Another day, another puzzle solved.
