Okay, so, I was messing around online, trying to find something fun to do, and I stumbled upon this crossword puzzle. The clue that caught my eye was “Green tea ice cream ingredient.”

I thought, “Hey, I love green tea ice cream! I wonder what the answer is?” I mean, I make the stuff at home sometimes, but I never really thought about it in terms of a crossword clue.

First off, I started brainstorming. I grabbed a pen and paper and just jotted down every ingredient I could think of that goes into green tea ice cream.

• Milk
• Cream
• Sugar
• Eggs
• Matcha

I was feeling pretty good about my list. But then I remembered that crossword clues can be tricky. They’re not always straightforward. I figured the main ingredient, other than the usual ice cream stuff, was matcha.

I got stuck here, thinking maybe there was another ingredient I use but I’m not thinking of it. To figure this out, I searched online for crossword answers to this clue. There are sites dedicated to these, and some sites had different answers.

Some sites said it could be matcha, but others said it might be something else, some even mentioned “tea”. I tried typing in different answers into the website, but none were correct.

Looking at the Crossword

Then, I noticed that the LA Times had listed the puzzle as a daily puzzle, which meant that it should be easier. I figured, maybe there were other solutions out there that I just hadn’t seen yet.

I went back to the crossword itself and looked at the number of letters needed for the answer. 6 letters. So that ruled out “tea” and a few others. That’s when it hit me. It has to be matcha.

I typed it into the online crossword, and bam! It was the right answer. Felt pretty satisfying, to be honest. It wasn’t a huge deal, just a little online crossword, but it was a fun way to kill some time and get the brain working.

So, yeah, that’s my little story about solving the “Green tea ice cream ingredient” crossword clue. Turns out, the most obvious answer is sometimes the right one, even in a crossword puzzle! Who knew?