“I finished this crossword!”

As a detective solving the mystery of the crossword clue “I finished this crossword!”, my thought process went through several stages. At first, I considered the literal meaning of the clue and searched for crossword-related terms such as “completed” or “solved”. However, these options did not fit within the number of available squares.

Next, I noticed that the tense of the verb in the clue was past tense, suggesting that a phrase indicating completion or conclusion might be appropriate. This led me to consider words like “end” or “over”, but again, they did not fit within the crossword pattern.

Finally, I realized that the word “crossword” could simply be substituted for the word “puzzle” without disrupting the meaning of the clue. This opened up a wider range of possibilities, including the phrase “puzzlesover“, which fit perfectly in both length and meaning. This phrase can be interpreted as “the puzzles are over” or “I am finished with the puzzles”, making it the ideal solution to complete the crossword puzzle.