Alright, let me tell you about tackling today’s crossword puzzle. It was pretty standard stuff until I hit one clue that made me pause for a bit: “contacted privately online”.
So, I first looked at the grid. Okay, four letters needed. My brain immediately started churning out possibilities. What do you call it when you message someone directly, not in a public space? You know, like on those social media apps.
My first thought was something like “PING”. Seemed okay, four letters. But does “ping” really mean privately contacted? Not always. You can ping someone in a group chat. So, I put that one aside for a moment.
Then I thought, maybe “MAIL”? Like email? Again, four letters. But the clue specifically said “online”, which felt broader than just email, more like instant messaging type stuff. Plus, “mail” didn’t feel quite right for the “privately” part either, somehow. It felt a bit old-fashioned for this context.
Digging a bit deeper
I stared at the empty squares again. What if I already had some letters from other clues? Let’s imagine I had the ‘M’ as the second letter. So, _ M _ _ .
Okay, “contacted privately online”… what’s that common term everyone uses? Direct Message, right? But that’s way too long. People shorten it though. They say “DM”.
Then it clicked. The clue was “contacted“, past tense. How do people write the past tense of DM? Like, “I DM’d him” or “I DMed him”.
- Could it be DMED?
Let’s see. D-M-E-D. Four letters. Fits the space. And it definitely means “contacted privately online”. It felt right, like the kind of slightly awkward verbing of an abbreviation that crossword creators love.
I penciled in DMED. Checked the crossing words (the ones going down that intersected with it), and yeah, the letters seemed to work out just fine with the other answers I had tentatively put in.
So, that was it. Took a few minutes of thinking about how we actually talk about this stuff online versus the formal words. Funny how language evolves, isn’t it? Anyway, puzzle solved, time for a coffee.
