I’ll admit, I was completely stumped at first. Seeing ‘Vacuumed’ and ‘Zoom’ together, I became convinced the theme was ‘activities done remotely from home’. Vacuumed (a Roomba), Zoom (a meeting), it felt perfect. I even started thinking of what the fourth clue might be, maybe ‘Taxes’ or something similar. Then ‘Skiing’ showed up, and my theory crashed. Unless you’re on a very expensive simulator, skiing isn’t a living room activity. That clue single-handedly shattered my remote-work theory and forced me to start from scratch.
I pivoted to thinking about the letter Z, since it appeared in ‘Zoom’ and ‘Vacuumed’. But ‘Skiing’ and ‘Week’ have no Z, so that was another dead end fast. The frustration was real. I was just staring at the words, looking for anything they shared. That’s when my eyes stopped focusing on the meanings and started just… looking at the shapes. I scanned ‘Vacuumed’… V-A-C-**UU**-M-E-D. I scanned ‘Zoom’… Z-**OO**-M. I saw the pattern right there. The double vowels, sitting in the middle of the word.