Okay, so the other day I got this idea buzzing in my head: a crossword puzzle themed around basketball championship trophies. Sounded like a fun little project, you know? Something different.
Getting Started
First thing I did was grab a notebook and just started scribbling down words. Anything that popped into my head related to basketball champs and the shiny hardware they get. Stuff like team names – you know, the big ones, Lakers, Celtics, maybe even the Warriors. Then player names, the legends, gotta have Jordan, right? And LeBron. Then the trophy itself, the Larry O’Brien trophy, that was a must-have.
I also thought about action words, like dunk, swish, finals, victory. Just kept listing them out until I had a decent pile of words to play with. Some longer, some shorter.
Building the Grid
Next came the grid part. Honestly, this is where I always get a bit stuck. I tried sketching it out on paper first. I wanted “LARRYOBRIEN” to be a central piece, maybe running across. Then I tried fitting “CHAMPIONS” vertically, intersecting it. It’s like Tetris, but with letters, and way more frustrating sometimes.
- I placed the big theme words first.
- Then I started weaving the smaller words around them.
- Lots of erasing happened. Seriously, my eraser got a workout.
- Had to find those little connecting words, like ‘ERA’ or ‘NET’, just to make things fit. Sometimes you end up with weird short words, but hey, that’s crossword life.
Took me a good couple of hours just fiddling with the layout until it looked somewhat okay, with a decent number of crossing words and not too many black squares clumped together.
Writing the Clues
Once the grid felt solid, I moved on to writing the clues. This part’s kinda fun, like making little riddles. For the theme entries, like “LARRYOBRIEN”, the clue was pretty straightforward, maybe something like “NBA championship prize”. For player names, maybe “He wore number 23 for the Bulls”.
The filler words needed clues too. For something like “NET”, I just put “Hoop dangler” or similar. Tried to keep the clues clear but not too obvious. Wanted a bit of a challenge, but nothing crazy hard. Had to look up a few things to make sure my clues were accurate, especially for some older team facts I wasn’t 100% on.
Finishing Touches
After drafting all the clues, I put it aside for a bit. Came back later with fresh eyes to review everything. Checked if the clues matched the grid answers perfectly. Read through it to see if it flowed okay. I even had my buddy try and solve a rough version. He pointed out a couple of clues that were confusing, so I tweaked those.
Finally, after all that back and forth, scribbling, erasing, and typing, I had my “basketball champions trophy crossword” ready. It wasn’t perfect, probably, but it was done. Felt pretty good to see the finished thing after wrestling with it for a while. Just a little something I put together, based on that initial idea. Hopefully, someone else finds it fun to solve too.
