Stumped on a French-Portuguese crossword clue? Find the answer here!

As a detective, my first step when solving a mystery is to collect as many clues as possible. In this case, the clue provided the Portuguese word ‘Obrigado’ and its French equivalent was required. Knowing that ‘Obrigado’ means ‘thank you’ in Portuguese, I searched for a similar word in French which could be used to convey gratitude. The answer hit me: the French word for ‘thank you’ is ‘merci‘. ‘Merci’ and ‘Obrigado’ have a similar ring to them, and both express gratefulness. My intuition was further confirmed when I tried to fit ‘MERCI‘ into the puzzle and found that it matched the pattern. The same logic could be applied to any bilingual crossword puzzle, which requires word associations as well as linguistic knowledge. I’m certain that with this strategy, I’ll be able to uncover many more linguistic mysteries in the future.