the symphony series: recap

dear solvers,

as most of you probably know, last month i wrote a puzzle every day (with the exception of two guest puzzles). this was a deeply moving experience for me, and i have many thoughts on it–so many, in fact, that i'm dedicating this entire post to those thoughts. 

i'm aware that historically, my writing on this blog has not been very good. that's because i spend all my effort on the puzzles themselves, so the blog write-ups are hurried, ungrammatical, and often nonsensical. since this write-up is the product for august, i'm actually dedicating time and editing to it. so i hope you'll read it! 

there are no spoilers here for the project, so feel free to read this and then go back and solve!

part 1: the emotional weight

in short, writing a puzzle a day was a catharsis i never thought possible. i have never really understood the appeal of journaling; though i have tried to keep a diary in the past, i've never lasted more than a couple of weeks. yet writing a daily puzzle emulated journaling in a way that finally made it all click for me. making a puzzle out of my day's emotions helped me synthesize the day into its essence. sitting down to write each puzzle, i would think: "what were the defining emotions of my day? how can i make my solver feel those same things?". while the second question took more time and led way to the actual puzzle, it was the first question that brought me inner peace. being able to successfully recognize and log daily emotions was a game-changer; i have found myself opening the blog during therapy to remind myself of how my days had been. 

i don't know what it says about me that i need puzzles to journal and synthesize my emotions, but i do know that what i felt this july was magical. i cannot recommend the experience of journaling with a daily puzzle enough. (if any of you end up trying it, let me know! i'd be happy to feature your symphony series on the blog). 

beyond the catharsis of making the puzzles, i cannot express just how moved i was that people actually solved them. that this blog gets any pageviews is still something of a mystery to me. you being here and reading this means the world to me. i hope something i did last month moved you.

but enough of the emotional shit. i have lots of thoughts on the puzzles themselves that i'd like to unpack. 

part 2: a peek behind the curtain

i have never been prouder of any puzzle than i am of these twenty-nine. each one accurately encapsulates a day in my life. they are, in many ways, my magnum opus, and the grand climax of the dissonant grids project. 

going into this, i told myself i would not make it too obvious what i want you to feel from each puzzle. for a real symphony, shouldn't that sort of analysis be left to the music nerds who write scholarly articles and reviews? and i still don't want to lay my hand completely flat on the table. but i've realized that it's foolish to assume that anyone will really want to sit back and analyze these works. that's fair—the world is a crazy place and you all have better things to be doing. so i've made a google document where i've written up the main gimmicks of each puzzle, and why they are what they are. if you are curious what my intentions were, it could be an interesting read. (there are spoilers, obviously).

 that said, my google doc notes are not complete or definitive analyses. you are more than welcome to draw your own conclusions, which are by definition just as accurate as my own. if you're feeling analytical, i encourage you not to read the google doc and rather to go back and analyze for yourself. there are gimmicks and easter eggs i've left out.

part 3: what comes next?

as proud as i am of this work, there's room for improvement. in his gorgeous write-up of the work, the literal GOAT will nediger wrote: 

"The series is framed as a sort of cruciverbal symphony, though that analogy didn't really ring true for me. A symphony, at least on the classical model, has a tightly-linked large-scale structure connecting its movements, whereas I had no idea what to expect from day to day in Owen's series. A more revealing comparison for me would be to something like Luciano Berio's Sequenza, a series of 14 compositions for solo instruments or voice, incorporating a wide range of extended techniques and oddities (perhaps most notoriously the moment in Sequenza V in which the soloist turns to the audience and asks "Why?"). Owen's series is similarly an exercise in experimentation, encompassing many different approaches to grid design and cluing, many of which wouldn't fly in mainstream venues."

this analysis is very fair. indeed, my puzzles were scattershot at best. to me, of course, they read as one symphony: they are tightly linked in that they tell the story of my month! but they are at best a symphony behind the curtain. on stage, i agree they present more as a sequence of oddities. perhaps this is where my ability to compare my puzzles to music runs out. like i have said, i have only a very basic knowledge of music and music theory.

or, perhaps, this points at how i can improve. what if the daily puzzles were more tightly linked. what if there were some sort of meta gimmick...

nah, there's not.

i wish i had the foresight to plan that. imagine how smart it would make me look if i could say, "voila, there's been a meta all along, hiding in plain sight!" alas, i am not that smart. for a while, i toyed with the idea of doing a second symphony series in august to address this. but, for reasons i'll discuss in a future post, that didn't work out. for me, this is where the symphony series comes to an end.

that said, i can't encourage all of you enough to try this journaling-through-crosswords strategy. make your own symphonies! i can't put into words how beautiful the experience can be.

i'll be back in october with a new puzzle-- i'm taking september off because it's the start of school!

i love you more than you could ever imagine,

owen