Stumped by ‘Spoke with’ on your crossword? Find the answer here!

As a detective solving the mystery of the crossword clue ‘Spoke with,’ my first thought was to look for words that describe communication between two individuals. I scribbled down a list of possibilities ranging from ‘chatted’ to ‘discussed’. However, none of them fit the allotted spaces in the crossword puzzle. My attention then turned to the other clues in the puzzle, specifically those that intersected with the empty spaces in this particular clue. I noticed that one of those intersecting words was ‘to’ which immediately caught my attention. That influenced my mental focus towards solving the crossword in the context of “talked to”. With the possibilities exhausted, the answer of ‘TALKEDTO’ came to me as a perfect match to the combination of letters needed to complete the empty spaces. In conclusion, careful analysis of the intersecting words in the crossword, combined with a process of elimination and a sharp perception to interrelate incomplete clues, all contributed to my discovery of the solution to the mystery of the ‘Spoke with’ clue.