🐻‍❄️: notes

**spoilers ahead

 

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after not constructing for so long (have been/still am grieving/sick/tired/lonely/afraid/confusedashell/etc.), i wanted to make something small and intended the clues to be on the simpler side 

 

 

for the design, i used the heart shape in libreoffice and icons in ms word - i feel like using those two programs as much as i could to make the squares went smoother than using ms paint mostly (like i did for my last puzzle) i had some difficulty matching colors between squares, i still didn't figure out where the issue is - with amuselab's color picker or the ms one on my computer

 

the seeds for the grid were HEART & HANDS, i liked that WRIST & ROSES showed up across from each other and also SANDCASTLES & INDIAN OCEAN, it reminded me of the beach

15A: EDDIES - enjoyed learning about eddies and feel like they're a helpful metaphor for life challenges

19A: ALE - 🫚 ginger ale is known in my family as 'gingrale' 

37A: SNES - i've never played Star Fox on this console, but Star Fox Adventures & Star Fox: Assault on the gamecube were me and my siblings’ favorites - i remember we got into a lot of fights when playing too

4D: TINIER - fairy flies are "nearly 400 times smaller than the typical ant" (Dr. Universe, 2022)

27D: ALTA - i grew up watching a lot of indian tv dramas with my grandma and i loved these scenes :-)

the alta in Devdas (2002) is also memorable 

28A: ORACLE - i learned this word from "The Bonesetter's Daughter" by Amy Tan when i was young, it was one of the first really long books i read

thank you for solving ☺️