Okay, so yesterday I was messing around with one of those crossword puzzles, you know, the kind you find in the Sunday paper? I got stuck on this one clue: “Oolong brewer.” It totally stumped me. I mean, I know oolong is a kind of tea, but what do you call the thing you brew it in?

So, I started digging around. First, I just racked my brain, thinking of all the tea-related stuff I could. Kettle? Nope, that’s for heating the water. Strainer? Nah, that’s for after you brew it. I was getting nowhere.

Then, I hit the internet. I typed “oolong brewer crossword clue” into the search bar and bam! A bunch of crossword solver sites popped up. These sites are pretty cool, they basically have a huge database of clues and answers. Most of them were pointing to a six-letter word, and a few even had the answer right there: TEAPOT.

Scouring the Crossword Sites

• I checked out a couple of different sites, just to be sure. Some had other possible answers, like words with different lengths, but “TEAPOT” kept coming up as the most likely one.
• One site even mentioned that this clue had been seen in the Eugene Sheffer puzzle multiple times. I don’t know who Eugene Sheffer is, but he sure likes his oolong!

I felt a little silly for not getting it myself, but hey, that’s what these puzzles are for, right? To challenge you and make you learn something new. And I definitely learned that the thing you use to brew oolong tea is called a teapot. Who knew?

Anyway, I plugged “TEAPOT” into the puzzle, and it fit perfectly. It was a real “aha!” moment. I managed to finish the rest of the puzzle, feeling pretty proud of myself, even though I had to cheat a little. Maybe I’ll try brewing some oolong in my own teapot this weekend. Or maybe not, making tea is a hard job!