Okay, so today I decided to tackle a crossword puzzle clue that had me stumped: “decide that one will.” It seems simple, but the wording threw me off.
First, I brainstormed a bunch of words related to “decide.” You know, like “choose,” “resolve,” “determine”… that sort of thing. I jotted them all down on a piece of scrap paper, hoping something would click.
Then, I looked at the number of letters in the clue. The answer in my puzzle needed to be a specific number. I considered the ones that fit.
- “Choose” and related words were too many letters.
- “Resolve” was too long.
- “Determine” was out of the question.
I started thinking about phrases, not just single words. Maybe it was something like “opt to” or “go for”… but neither of those fit with the number of letters.
I was really stuck, staring at the blank spaces, when I decided to take a step back and consider the sentence structure.
“decide that one will”. “Decide”, “that”, “one”, “will”, I repeat them over and over.
Eureka!
I started messing around, changing the sentence. The word “will” gave me a thought, and finally, I got it! The answer was something related to “intend”! It was a short verb. Bingo!
It was so obvious, I don’t know why it took me so long! Sometimes, you just need to look at things from a different angle. It was satisfying to finally crack it.
