Coworker: “Shakespeare was clue in my crossword this morning.”
I love a good Shakespeare crossword clue. I love it when Shakespeare is the Jeopardy category. It’s a chance to test my knowledge on the fly. I love the ones that I don’t know the answer to, because it means I get to go seek out and learn something new about my favorite subject. In this case, though, I thought I could predict the future.
Me: “I die.”
Coworker: “What?”
Me: “Sorry. Was it Romeo’s last words? Because I know that one.”
The New York Times put this clue in a puzzle once and put this blog on the map. I woke up one morning to see that literally tens of thousands of people had hit my site. It was just a coincidence that I had a page up titled “Romeo’s Last Words,” and google had caught it. So when thousands of NY Times crossword solvers suddenly searched “Romeo’s last words”, there I was. It comes back around again every few years, too. I can tell by the spike my traffic.
Coworker: “No. It was, ‘the witches in Macbeth‘.”
Oh, well. But like I said, I like when I don’t know the answer, I get to make more guesses. I had a sudden epiphany. I thought I for sure had this one.
Me: “Wyrd.”
Coworker: “Nope.”
Drat. I admitted I was stumped. What else could you say that was specific to Macbeth’s witches in only four letters? Toil? Fire? Burn? Rain?
Coworker: “They wanted ‘trio’.”
Me: “Well that’s just … that’s annoying. There’s nothing Shakespeare about that answer.”
Coworker: “I know, but sometimes they’re like that. Don’t feel bad, I had the t and the o and I still didn’t get it.”
Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth obviously threw me off because that one had four witches. 🙂