Alright, so I was sitting down with my usual morning crossword the other day. Had my coffee, pen ready, you know the drill. Things were going pretty smoothly until I hit this one clue: “nothing in Latin”. It was a five-letter word.
My first thought went blank, honestly. Latin? It’s been ages. I started racking my brain. What sounds like “nothing”? I scribbled down a few possibilities on the side, things that just popped into my head, but nothing seemed quite right for Latin.
Trying to Remember
I stared at the grid, looking at the letters I already had filled in around it. Let’s see, it was something like N _ _ _ L. That N at the start helped narrow it down a bit. Still, my mind wasn’t cooperating. I thought maybe some variation of ‘null’? Like ‘nullus’? But that didn’t quite fit the ‘nothing’ meaning directly, felt more like ‘none’ or ‘not any’, and didn’t fit the letter count or the L at the end anyway.
I put the puzzle down for a bit, refilled my coffee. Sometimes stepping away helps jog the memory. Came back to it. N _ _ _ L. What Latin word means nothing and fits?
- Tried thinking about famous Latin phrases.
- Considered words related to zero or emptiness.
- Looked at the crossing words again to double-check those letters.
The Breakthrough
Then, it just sort of clicked. Like digging through an old box in the attic and finding something you forgot you had. The word NIHIL surfaced. N-I-H-I-L. Five letters. Starts with N, ends with L. Means ‘nothing’. Bingo.
Felt pretty good writing that one in. It’s funny how those bits of old knowledge stick around somewhere in your head, just waiting for the right prompt. Took me a little while, but got there in the end. Just another small victory in the daily crossword battle.
