Alright, let’s talk about today’s New York Times crossword. I settled in with my coffee, pen in hand, ready to tackle it. Things were moving along okay, getting some of the easy fill, you know how it is. Then I hit this clue: golden retirees. Six letters.
My first thought? Okay, ‘retirees’ makes me think of older people, folks enjoying their ‘golden years’. But what fits in six letters? SENIORS? Yeah, that’s six letters. But it felt a bit too… direct? Too obvious for the NYT sometimes. Plus, the ‘golden’ part felt specific. Why ‘golden’?
I looked at the letters I already had crossing it. Had an ‘L’ in the second spot, maybe an ‘E’ near the end. S-E-N-I-O-R-S didn’t fit with that ‘L’ there. So, Seniors was out. Back to the drawing board.
What else is ‘golden’? Jewelry? Sunsets? No, didn’t make sense with ‘retirees’. I stared at it for a bit, maybe sipped some more coffee. ‘Golden’… ‘retirees’… My mind wandered. Golden… like the dog breed? Golden Retrievers?
Now, ‘Golden Retrievers’ is way too long. But ‘retirees’ is plural. What if the clue was being clever, like a play on words? Not people retiring, but the name of something that sounds like it could retire, and is golden?
Okay, Golden Retrievers. How would you shorten that to six letters, plural? Retrievers… GOLDENS? G-O-L-D-E-N-S. Let me check the squares again. G-O-L… yes, the ‘L’ fit. D-E-N-S… yes, the ‘E’ I thought might be there worked too. It seemed plausible.
It felt a little tricky, that clue. Using ‘retirees’ to point towards a dog breed, just based on the name ‘Retriever’. But that’s the kind of stuff these puzzles do. You think it’s one thing, and they twist it.
So, I penciled in GOLDENS. It fit perfectly with the crosses I had, and it made sense in that typical crossword-puzzle-logic kind of way. Felt good to finally crack that one. It wasn’t super hard, but it made me stop and think for a minute, which is what I like about doing these things.
