Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with a crossword puzzle. The title was “astronomy but not astrology.” Sounds kinda weird, right? But I figured, why not give it a shot?
I started by looking at all the clues. I didn’t just go from top to bottom. I mean, who does that? I scanned through everything to find the easy ones. The “gimmes,” you know? Usually, the fill-in-the-blank ones are the easiest. They’re mostly common knowledge, stuff everyone kinda knows.
Then I saw this clue: 1D. [Astronomy, but not astrology]. I was like, what the heck does that mean? But then it hit me! It’s probably some kind of acronym, something about education. And I figured it out! It was STEM FIELD. You know, STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. That makes sense, right?
There were also clues in quotation marks. I remembered that means the answer is a word or phrase that means kinda the same thing. It’s like, if the clue was “Spot of tea?” in quotes, the answer might be something like “EARL GREY”.
I went online to see if anyone else had solved it. Turns out, a bunch of people were also trying to figure it out. I saw some posts saying it was last seen on July 28th and in the NYT puzzle on July 27th. I guess it’s a popular one! Some websites had a whole bunch of possible solutions, like 30 or 40. But I already knew the answer was STEM FIELD.
Anyway, I kept working on the puzzle, filling in the blanks. It was actually pretty fun. Even though I got stuck a couple of times, I managed to figure it all out in the end. So, yeah, that’s how I solved the “astronomy but not astrology” crossword. Not bad for a casual afternoon, huh?
- Started with scanning all clues for easy ones.
- Focused on fill-in-the-blank clues, which are usually common knowledge.
- Figured out the 1D. [Astronomy, but not astrology] clue was STEM FIELD.
- Understood that clues in quotation marks mean the answer is a similar word or phrase.
- Checked online to see others’ solutions and saw it was a recent puzzle.
- Kept working on the puzzle and eventually solved it.
It wasn’t too hard, but it was a good little brain exercise. Maybe I’ll try another one of these soon. Who knows, I might even become a crossword pro!
