School honcho

As a detective, upon receiving the crossword clue ‘School honcho’, the first thing that came to mind was that ‘school honcho’ is another way of saying ‘school leader’. From there, my attention shifted to the number of letters in the word, which happened to be four. I then began to think about common words that are synonymous with ‘school leader’ and have four letters. Aha! The word ‘DEAN’ quickly came to mind. This is because a Dean is typically an administrative or academic leader in a school or university, making them a fitting answer to the crossword clue ‘School honcho’. Of course, this couldn’t be confirmed until the other intersecting letters filled in, but my intuition was right and the puzzle was solved.