Crossword: "Rain sounds"
I’m publishing a crossword on this blog for the first time — I hope you enjoy it. I’ve added some notes below the puzzle, offset with some space to avoid any spoilers.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
below!
I’ve wanted to make this puzzle for a very long time, but I couldn’t figure out any way to make the theme something that could run in a mainstream publcation. Finally I decided that this was how I wanted to do it and I’d just share it myself, which feels a bit exciting. I’ve long admired the crossword bloggers of the world; maybe now I can start to count myself among them.
The song at the heart of this puzzle is very beautiful, and if you haven’t heard it I recommend listening in both English and Portuguese. I’ve always loved the version by Art Garfunkel and had a very special experience one time seeing Sondre Lerche perform it live. (That’s not the exact performance I saw but I think it was the same tour.) For a laugh, the 1980s Coca-Cola jingle version of it is charmingly insane.
Making the verse into a theme felt like a small act of translation, and it’s always been interesting to me that Jobim wrote both sets of lyrics himself. It’s especially interesting that his translation was also a localization: the English lyrics are written for audiences in the northen hemisphere, who may associate March with rebirth and springtime. In English, it’s about the end of frost and new life, and the images take on a new meaning.
I’ve had occasion to think a lot this year about endings and beginnings, and it felt good to engage with a work that addresses them so beautifully. I hope you enjoyed the puzzle.