“Oh well, it didn’t matter anyway”

As a detective solving the mystery of the crossword clue “‘Oh well, it didn’t matter anyway’“, my initial thought was that the solution had to involve a phrase or a word that conveyed a sense of defeat or resignation. I scanned the available clues and found that the puzzle had five spaces, which made me realize that the solution was likely to be a short word or phrase. I also noticed that the fourth letter was an ‘L’, which gave me a clue to the direction of the answer.

When I looked more closely at the other clues, I realized that one of them was “Draw“, which suggested that the solution could be related to a game or a match that didn’t have a clear winner. From there, I started thinking about terms that are used in games to describe a non-victory outcome, such as “tie” or “draw“. But neither of these words fitted the available spaces in the puzzle.

This is where my insights and experience as a detective came into play. I reasoned that the crossword puzzle was highly likely to be using wordplay, and that clues such as “Draw” could be interpreted in more than one way. And then it struck me: what if the “draw” in the puzzle didn’t refer to a sport, but instead to a verb that meant to pull or to take out? This led me to the word “loss“, which could mean both a defeat in a game or a reduction in quantity.

But the puzzle didn’t fit; ‘loss’ was one letter too many. That’s when the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, and I realized that the answer was “NOLOSS“. It conveyed the sense of defeat or resignation that was required to solve the puzzle, but it also suggested that the outcome didn’t matter much, which was indicated by the clue “‘Oh well, it didn’t matter anyway'”.

In summary, my experience and deduction skills as a detective helped me to unlock the wordplay and the subtle hints in the crossword puzzle, which allowed me to arrive at the answer of “NOLOSS“.