Okay, so yesterday I was totally bored, right? Like, nothing to do. I was scrolling through some random stuff online and saw someone mention a crossword puzzle. And I thought, “Hey, I haven’t done one of those in ages!”
So, I figured, why not make my own? I love baseball, so I decided to make it about baseball positions. I mean, how hard could it be, right?
First thing I did was grab a piece of paper and started brainstorming all the baseball positions I could think of. You know, pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, shortstop, third base, left field, center field, right field… the usual suspects. I even threw in a couple of more obscure ones like designated hitter and relief pitcher just to make it a little more challenging.
Then came the fun part, trying to arrange them into a crossword grid. This took way longer than I thought it would! I kept running into situations where words wouldn’t connect properly, or I’d have too many black squares in one area. I was erasing and redrawing lines like crazy. Seriously, I think I went through half an eraser.
I used a online tool to generate the crossword puzzle grid. I typed in all my words, hit “generate,” and boom, it spat out a pretty decent looking grid. I tweaked it a little bit to make it look cleaner, but overall, it saved me a ton of time.
Next up: writing the clues. This was actually kinda tough. I wanted the clues to be challenging but not impossible. I tried to avoid just giving away the answer directly. Instead, I focused on giving hints about the position’s responsibilities or common nicknames. For example, for “catcher,” I wrote something like “The backstop on defense.” For “shortstop,” I went with “The infield general between second and third.”
Once I had all the clues written out, I double-checked everything to make sure there were no typos or inconsistencies. Then, I printed out a few copies of the crossword puzzle and handed them out to my family. They were all scratching their heads for a while, which made me feel pretty good. They actually enjoyed it. Some of them are not even baseball fans and still figured it out!
It was a fun little project, and it kept me busy for a few hours. Plus, now I have a custom baseball crossword puzzle that I can use to stump my friends. Maybe I’ll try making another one with even more obscure baseball terms. We’ll see!
