So, I was sitting down with my coffee this morning, tackling the daily crossword like I usually do. It’s a nice little routine. Mostly smooth sailing, until I hit this one clue: “Dumbbell exercise”. Seemed simple enough, right? I lift dumbbells myself, figured this would be a gimme.
My first thoughts went straight to the specific stuff I actually do at the gym.
Thinking Through the Moves
I started rattling off possibilities in my head:
- Bicep curl
- Triceps extension
- Shoulder press
- Chest fly
- Bent-over row
- Lunge (sometimes you hold dumbbells)
But looking at the grid, none of these really fit the letter count or the letters I already had in place. Most of these are two words anyway, or just too long. Crosswords usually want something more concise.
Okay, back to basics. What’s a really common, maybe even slangy or shortened, term? I thought about “LIFT”. Yeah, you lift dumbbells. Plausible. Maybe “REP”? As in, doing repetitions. But that felt a bit indirect for the exercise itself. It’s part of the exercise, not the exercise name.
I stared at the squares again. Needed a four-letter word, ending in ‘L’. Hmm. What dumbbell exercise is super common and fits that? My brain immediately went back to the list.
CURL. Of course. Bicep curl. Probably the most classic dumbbell move people think of. It fit the space perfectly. Four letters, ends in ‘L’. It felt right. It’s specific enough to be an exercise, but general enough that “bicep” isn’t needed for the clue.
It’s funny how sometimes the most obvious answer takes a bit of digging to uncover. You go through all the complex options first before landing on the simple one staring you in the face. Just pencilled it in, and moved on to the next clue. Felt good to figure it out though, like solving a mini-problem.
