My Go at the ‘Nash of Never Have I Ever Crossword’
Okay, so the other day I got this idea stuck in my head – mixing up a crossword puzzle with that game ‘Never Have I Ever’. Sounded like a potentially fun, maybe slightly weird, combination. I called my little project the ‘Nash of Never Have I Ever Crossword’, mostly because it sounded kind of catchy, not for any deep reason, really.
First thing I did was just grab a piece of paper and a pencil. Old school, I know. I thought about using some online tool, but sometimes just sketching things out feels more direct, you know? So, paper and pencil it was.
Then came the core part: the ‘Never Have I Ever’ bits. I needed stuff that could somehow translate into crossword answers. I started jotting down some common ‘Never Have I Ever’ things, the kind you hear at parties.
Getting the Content Together
- Never have I ever dyed my hair a crazy color.
- Never have I ever been skydiving.
- Never have I ever eaten sushi.
- Never have I ever broken a bone.
- Never have I ever traveled alone.
I brainstormed a bunch more, trying to get a mix of common and slightly less common experiences. The trick was finding a single word, or maybe two short words, that could be the answer in the crossword, hinted at by the ‘Never Have I Ever’ statement.
Making the Puzzle Grid
This was the fiddly part. I started trying to link potential answer words together. For example, from ‘dyed my hair’, maybe the answer could be ‘COLOR’ or ‘DYE’. For ‘skydiving’, maybe ‘JUMP’ or ‘FALL’. For ‘sushi’, ‘RAWFISH’ (too long maybe?) or just ‘SUSHI’. ‘Broken a bone’ could lead to ‘BREAK’ or ‘CAST’. ‘Traveled alone’ might be ‘SOLO’ or ‘ALONE’.
I drew a rough grid. You know how it goes, trying to make words intersect. This took a bit of trial and error. I’d place a word like ‘SOLO’, then see if ‘BREAK’ could cross it. Then maybe ‘SUSHI’ could fit coming down from the ‘S’ in ‘SOLO’. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but you’re also creating the pieces as you go.
I kept adjusting the grid and the words. Some ‘Never Have I Ever’ ideas just didn’t work because the key answer word was too awkward or didn’t fit with anything else. So, I had to swap some out. I went back to my list, picked different prompts, found different answer words. It was a back-and-forth process.
Writing the Clues
Once I had a grid that looked okay, with words interlocking, I numbered the starting squares for Across and Down. Then I wrote out the actual clues. The clues were basically the ‘Never Have I Ever…’ statements themselves.
So, for example:
- Across 3: Never have I ever journeyed by myself (4 letters) – Answer: SOLO
- Down 1: Never have I ever fractured part of my skeleton (5 letters) – Answer: BREAK
- Down 2: Never have I ever leaped from an airplane (4 letters) – Answer: JUMP
I tried to make the clues clear enough to point to the answer word I’d chosen.
The Final Result
After a bit of erasing and rewriting, I had my finished ‘Nash of Never Have I Ever Crossword’. It wasn’t huge, maybe 10 or 12 intersecting words. It looked like a proper crossword, just with slightly unusual clues.
I haven’t actually tried it out on anyone yet, but looking at it, I think it could be a fun little activity. Maybe a bit of a conversation starter too, as people solve the clues and think about whether they’ve actually done those things. It was a pretty satisfying little project, turning a random idea into something concrete on paper.
