Acknowledge wordlessly

As a detective, when I first saw the crossword clue ‘Acknowledge wordlessly‘, I immediately thought of ways in which someone could acknowledge someone or something without using words. Perhaps they could raise their eyebrows or nod their head. With this in mind, I focused on finding a four-letter word that fit the bill.

I started scanning through the available letters and noticed that the ‘O‘ was repeated twice. This sparked an idea that maybe the solution involves ‘O‘ being emphasized in some way. After some brainstorming, the word ‘nod‘ popped into my head. A nod is a universal gesture that can be used to communicate acknowledgement without words.

With my initial hunch, I started searching for a word that involved a nod, and that’s when I came across ‘NODTO‘. It made perfect sense. ‘Nod‘ is the gesture used for acknowledgement and ‘to‘ implies that the nod is towards something or somebody. Therefore, ‘NODTO‘ is the perfect four-letter solution to the clue ‘Acknowledge wordlessly‘. Through a combination of logic and intuition, I was able to crack the case and solve the mystery of the crossword clue.