Okay, so I wanted to share something I fiddled with recently. It’s about a crossword puzzle I was doing the other day.
My Crossword Moment
I like doing crosswords, you know, the kind you find in the newspaper or those puzzle books. Keeps the mind sharp, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Anyway, I was working through one, pretty standard stuff, getting most of the answers.
Then I hit this one clue. It just said: “Send as payment”. And it needed a four-letter word. Four letters. Seemed simple enough, right?
Well, I started thinking. What means “send”? Mail? Post? Nope, don’t fit or didn’t work with the letters I already had crossing it. What about “payment”? Pay? Give? Lend? Still nothing clicked. I stared at the little white squares for ages. I had an ‘M’ in the third spot from another word going down. So, something like _ _ M _.
I tried thinking about different ways you send money. Wire? Too short if it was just four letters, and didn’t fit the ‘M’. Cash? Doesn’t mean “send”. Check? Doesn’t fit the ‘M’.
- Tried thinking about old-fashioned ways.
- Looked at the clue again: “Send as payment”.
- Considered words related to debt or owing.
It was really bugging me. I put the puzzle down, made a cup of tea, came back. Looked at the crossing letters again. R _ M _ T? Wait, no, it was four letters. R _ M _ . Okay, the ‘R’ was the first letter from the word going across.
Suddenly, it just clicked. Like remembering something you didn’t know you forgot. REMIT. R-E-M-I-T. Oh, wait, that’s five letters. Drat. Back to the drawing board. Maybe the crossing letters I thought I had were wrong?
Okay, let me retrace. Four letters. “Send as payment”. What if the ‘M’ wasn’t right? What if I messed up the word going down? Let’s assume the four boxes were empty for a second. Send… pay… send money… What’s a simple word?
I think I got fixated on the obvious. Maybe it was simpler? Could it be just PAY? P-A-Y. No, that’s three letters. Drat. Okay, maybe the newspaper had a typo? Or maybe I was just being dense.
Let’s rethink. “Send as payment”. Four letters. Could it be something like POST? You post a payment sometimes. P-O-S-T. Yeah, that fits four letters. Let me check the crosses I was sure about… Hmm, didn’t quite fit one of them. Argh.
I finally decided to look at the answer key in the back of the book later that day. Felt like cheating, but I was stuck. And guess what it was? It was REMIT! But the grid definitely only had four squares printed. R-E-M-I… where did the ‘T’ go? I went back and looked closely at the grid. Turns out, I miscounted the squares for that clue! It was five squares all along, squeezed between darker lines. My eyes must’ve skipped over one. So, REMIT. R-E-M-I-T. To send money as payment. Fit perfectly once I realised it was five letters.
Felt a bit foolish, but also relieved. It wasn’t some super obscure word, just me not looking properly at the grid itself. Goes to show, sometimes the problem isn’t the puzzle, it’s how you’re looking at it. Just wanted to share that little moment of being completely stumped and then realizing my own silly mistake.
