Potentiometer is shutting off my circuit

Yesterday I tried to make a simple strobe light that would use a potentiometer's values to determine how fast or slow the led I was using would blink, but when I opened up the Serial Monitor and began to mess around with the knob, I noticed that when I would turn the potentiometer all the way down the Arduino would also turn off.

I had the leftmost pin of the pot hooked to ground, the middle to 5v, and the rightmost to A0. Is there something wrong with the way I hooked it up? If not, is there an alternate way I can hook it up in order to prevent the circuit from turning off?

I tried looking to see if any other people had a problem similar to this, but found no results.
I'm fairly new to physical electronic engineering, so any help/tips on this situation would be very much appreciated.

Yes, you have it wrong. You need to connect the CCW end to GND, the +5V to the CW pin and the CENTER pin (which is the wiper) goes to A0. This way the voltage will INCREASE as you turn the pot CW.

The reason the Arduino shut off is because you shorted 5V to GND!

Switched them around and it looks like everything works!!! Thank you very much for the speedy reply and solution!!