Okay, so yesterday I tackled this “evil in nature crossword” thing. Honestly, I thought it would be a chill way to spend an afternoon, you know? Boy, was I wrong.
It all started innocently enough. I printed out the crossword, grabbed my favorite pen (the one that doesn’t bleed through the paper), and settled in. I started with the easy clues, the ones I actually knew something about. Like, there was one about a venomous snake, and I instantly knew it was a viper. Bam! Got that one right away.
But then, things started to get… weird. The clues became super specific, like “fungus that attacks amphibians” or “parasite that controls ant behavior.” I mean, who knows this stuff?! I sure as heck didn’t. I spent a good hour just staring blankly at the page, feeling like a total idiot.
I tried looking stuff up online, but even that was a struggle. The clues were often worded in a really obscure way, so it was hard to even figure out what to search for. I felt like I was going down a rabbit hole of bizarre scientific terms and creepy crawlies. At one point, I think I accidentally ended up on a website about zombie ants. Seriously, it was disturbing.
The “fungus that attacks amphibians” clue was a real killer. I literally spent like 45 minutes researching amphibian diseases. Turns out, there are a lot of really gross things that can happen to frogs. Eventually, I figured out the answer was “chytrid,” which I can barely even pronounce.
After that, I started trying a different approach. Instead of focusing on the clues, I started looking at the number of letters in each word and then just tried to guess based on that. It was like playing a really messed-up game of hangman, but with Latin names for parasites. Not exactly my idea of a good time, but hey, I was committed at this point.
I started filling in letters based on the crossing words that I was more confident about. This helped a little bit, and I managed to piece together a few more answers. It was slow going, but I was making progress, however small.
And then there was this one clue about a specific type of poisonous plant. I knew it had to be something obscure, so I started just listing every poisonous plant I could think of and trying to fit the letters. After about 20 minutes of trial and error, I finally got it: “hemlock.” You know, the stuff Socrates drank. Cheerful, right?
Finally, after hours of struggling, I managed to finish the whole thing. It was such a relief. Honestly, I felt like I’d earned a PhD in evil nature just by completing that crossword.
- Started with the easy clues.
- Got stuck on the obscure ones.
- Resorted to online research (which was terrifying).
- Tried the “guess based on letter count” strategy.
- Filled in crossing letters to help.
- Finally, triumphantly finished the darn thing.
Would I do it again? Probably not. It was way more challenging (and unsettling) than I expected. But hey, at least I learned a lot about the darker side of the natural world. And now I can impress my friends with my encyclopedic knowledge of parasitic fungi. Or maybe not.
Lessons Learned
The main takeaway is that nature is scary. Really, really scary. And crossword puzzles can be deceptively difficult. Also, I need to brush up on my mycology and parasitology.
