New York Times Mini Crossword - 3/11/23

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Back in the initial Wordle craze of the pandemic I thought about a writing challenge of making a piece out of all your wrong guesses, but more recently I’ve become a crossworder.

Every day, whether in person or on opposite sides of the world, my boyfriend and I race to complete the New York Times Mini Crossword in the fastest time. Most of the time I win, and have time to think about the answers, the connections of clues and words, what it means about meaning itself. Soon that old Wordle idea comes back - what if I used the crossword answers as a prompt?

I always hate the idea of free writing to prompts, mostly because it never feels for something (and don’t we always want to be good and productive?). But, I try as often as I can to push through this discomfort and do it occasionally because even though the elements might not become something they are incredibly useful. You find yourself writing things you didn’t know you thought, creating images that could nestle into fiction or making statements that feel like resonant truths. I think all of those things are in here.