It Started With a Saturday Nightmare
Man, let me tell you, I was absolutely stuck. It wasn’t even a hard puzzle, just one of those late-week NYT beasts where they throw in some weird niche stuff they know you’ve seen but can’t quite place. I was cruising, filling in the grid nice and easy, and then I hit that spot. Four letters, maybe five, something like “A minor arcana grouping” or “Tarot deck suit, often symbolized by water.”
My brain immediately jumped to the obvious, right? Because I’m trying to solve a puzzle, not write a textbook. I hammered in things like DIAMOND, or maybe SPADE. Total waste of time. The intersecting words weren’t matching up at all. I tried shifting the letters, thinking maybe it was just a strange abbreviation. Nothing. I sat there for a solid hour, staring at those empty squares, feeling like a total chump. I even grabbed my old Bicycle deck, looking at the suits, trying to justify how “CLUBS” could fit into four slots. It can’t. Obviously. I seriously thought maybe the puzzle maker made a huge mistake that day.
The Moment I Blew Up My Own Process
I finally got mad enough to throw my pencil across the room. I realized my fundamental approach was busted. I was thinking standard playing cards, but the clue specifically said TAROT. That’s a different beast entirely. So I pivoted. I stopped trying to brute force the letters and decided I needed to understand the specific vocabulary the NYT puzzle setters use, because they use the same twenty solutions for the same concepts over and over again. You have to learn their language.
The first thing I did? I pulled up my messy notebook where I track common NYT crossword fillers. Nothing immediately hit for Tarot suits. It was sparse. So I started digging into the actual Rider-Waite suits, the ones everyone uses. I needed the letter counts, that’s key. It’s all about the grid dimensions.
- WANDS (5 letters)
- CUPS (4 letters)
- SWORDS (6 letters)
- PENTACLES (10 letters – no way that’s fitting in a quick slot)
Right away, CUPS and WANDS looked like the primary candidates for shorter answers. But which one was it this time? I went back to the puzzle and looked closely at the intersecting letters I was confident about. One letter I knew for sure had to be a ‘P’ from an earlier entry I was solid on. That killed WANDS immediately because it wouldn’t fit the flow. It had to be a four-letter word starting with C that used that P somewhere in the structure. Wait, no, the P was an intersecting letter, not a starter. So CUPS or WANDS was still on the table, depending on which letter the P hit.
But when I tried CUPS, everything snapped into place. The horizontal word, which I thought was impossible, suddenly made sense. It was some obscure acronym for a government agency I hadn’t even thought of until the ‘S’ from CUPS gave it away.
Confirming the Lock: Why They Always Go For CUPS
The realization hit me: they almost always go for CUPS when they need a four-letter answer for a Tarot suit. It’s short, common, and it fits neatly into the grid structure. But I needed proof beyond just this one instance. I needed to document the pattern so this never happened again.
I decided to check the archives. I literally typed in variations of “NYT crossword Tarot suit 4 letters” into an old puzzle database I use sometimes. I wasn’t looking for the exact clue I had, just the historical answers. And what did I find?
It was a parade of CUPS. I swear, 7 out of 10 times they need a four-letter suit, it’s CUPS. If they need five, it’s WANDS. Six, they go for SWORDS, but that’s much rarer for the quick fills. And I also noticed they sometimes use COINS for five letters, instead of WANDS, when they want to avoid repeating a letter like ‘S’ nearby.
I went back to my grid, wrote in CUPS with a heavy hand, and boom. The entire area unlocked. The whole point of blogging about this stuff isn’t just to tell you the answer, it’s to show you that when you hit a wall in the crossword, you have to stop guessing and start cataloging. That one horrible Saturday puzzle taught me that I needed to treat Tarot suits not as mystical items, but as simple, repeating, four- or five-letter words.
The Master List I Started Keeping
This is what I learned from that whole stressful afternoon. If you’re ever stuck on a Tarot suit clue, stop thinking about Kings and Queens right away, and look at the required length. This stuff is vital for speeding up your solve time. You have to treat these answers almost like algebraic variables—you input the length, and the output is the most probable suit name.
I grabbed a fresh page in my notebook and made myself a rule sheet just for this kind of esoteric clue. This is the practical result of my practice:
- 4 Letters: It is almost certainly CUPS. Lock it in, try to make the crosses work. It’s the highest probability answer.
- 5 Letters: 90% chance it is WANDS. They love WANDS because the ‘W’ is useful for tough letter intersections.
- 5 Letters (Alternative): If the intersecting letters rule out WANDS, try COINS. That’s the classic substitution for Pentacles/Disks, and it pops up more than you’d think, especially if the clue is about money or earth elements.
- 6 Letters: This is a split. It could be SWORDS, but occasionally I’ve seen DISKS if they are using a more traditional deck terminology.
I wasted an hour trying to reinvent the wheel, but by researching past habits, I solved the problem permanently. Now, whenever I see that clue, I don’t even hesitate. I look at the length, and I drop the historical answer right in. Saves me so much grief and makes those tough Saturdays fly by.
