Alright, let me tell you about tackling the NYT crossword today. Had my coffee, sat down, ready to go. Things were moving along okay, filling in some of the easier clues, you know how it is.
Then I hit this one: “olympic powerhouse”. Okay, not too bad, I thought. Pretty common knowledge, right? My grid showed it was a three-letter answer. Instantly, my brain screamed USA. Makes sense, they usually rake in a ton of medals every Olympics, summer or winter.
So, I started penciling it in. Got the ‘U’ down. Checked the crossing clue for the second letter. Let’s say it needed, I don’t know, a ‘T’. Wait a minute. ‘S’ from USA doesn’t fit ‘T’. Huh. Okay, maybe my first guess wasn’t it. That happens sometimes, the most obvious answer isn’t the one they’re looking for.
What else could it be? Three letters. CHN for China? They’re definitely a powerhouse too. Let’s try that. ‘C’ fits… ‘H’ fits… but the crossing for the third letter, ‘N’, didn’t work either. Needed something else entirely. Man, this was annoying. Such a seemingly simple clue.
I started thinking, maybe it’s not a modern powerhouse? But what else fits three letters? RUS for Russia? Checked the crossings again based on what I had… nope, still no good. I was getting a bit stuck. Stared at it for a while. Sometimes you just gotta step away or look at the clues around it.
I went back and looked really hard at that second crossing clue, the one that I thought needed a ‘T’. Read it again. Ohhhhh. I totally misread it. It wasn’t asking for something that started with T, the clue was something like “Golfer’s target” and the answer was TEE. Which meant the second letter could be an ‘S’. Silly me.
So, back to USA. ‘U’ worked. ‘S’ now worked with TEE (or whatever the actual crossing was, you get the idea). Checked the last letter, ‘A’. Did it fit its crossing clue? Yes, it did! Bingo.
It really was USA all along. My first instinct was right, but I messed up by misreading one of the crossing clues. Happens to the best of us, I guess. You get tunnel vision on one answer and assume it’s right, then it throws off everything else. Always gotta double-check those crossings carefully.
Anyway, felt good to finally ink that one in and move on. Just another day wrestling with the crossword puzzle.
