Okay, so, I was messing around with this crossword puzzle, right? The clue was just “ending,” and let me tell you, it took me a while to figure it out. I was totally stumped at the beginning.
I started by just staring at it, thinking maybe the answer would magically appear. Yeah, that didn’t work. Then, I tried to think of every word I could that had to do with “ending.” My brain was all over the place. I came up with “finish,” “conclusion,” “the end,” all the obvious stuff. But none of them fit the number of spaces in the puzzle.
So, I decided to change my tactics. I started looking at the words around the “ending” clue, hoping they would give me some hints. I saw some shorter words that I had already filled in, and that’s when it hit me.
The Realization
- Maybe it’s not a whole word, but just the ending part of a word!
- Like, maybe a suffix or something.
I started playing around with different suffixes in my head. “-ing,” “-ed,” “-tion.” Finally, I landed on “-al” as in “final”, and then “-ment” as in “fulfillment” and then “-ance” as in “acceptance”, and then “-ence” as in “difference”. They all are words that fit the meaning! I can check them in different crossword puzzles.
It was like a lightbulb went off. I realized that the clue wasn’t asking for a synonym for “ending,” but rather a common word ending, a suffix. That was a really tricky one, I tell you!
So, yeah, that’s how I finally cracked the “ending” crossword clue. It was a good reminder that sometimes you gotta think outside the box, or in this case, think about the parts of the words instead of just the whole thing. It was a fun little challenge, and I’m definitely keeping this trick in mind for future puzzles.
