DOUBLE-CROSSED

Tracy Gray lives in Sparks, Md., near Baltimore, where she and her husband own and operate a lawn-and-landscaping business. Tom Pepper lives in Eden Prairie, Minn., next door to Edina, of crossword fame. In April he plans to retire from his position of finance director for the city of Eagan after 29 years.

Tracy and Tom met at a crossword tournament several years ago and have been exchanging theme ideas ever since.

TRACY: Tom and I teamed up last July to try to breathe life into a double-double-crossing idea I had set aside. A RegEx string helped us find theme entries, but how would solvers know to reverse the order of the double-letter pairs on the crossing answers? When Tom proposed a slash through the rebus square, we were off and running.

TOM: In rereading the first few emails we traded, twice I wrote something like, "Nice idea, Tracy, but not sure that's possible to do." Then, of course, by the next email, she had done what I thought she couldn't. Finding six solid theme pairs, and then fitting the gangly, asymmetric crossing pairs into a grid, was challenging.

The crossing nature of the theme answers also constrained our non-theme fill options, though I'm pleased with what we were able to squeeze out of it. That said, I hope you don't encounter MESON crossing OOCYTE ever again!

I appreciate puzzles that solve better on paper than computer. With apologies to Mother Earth, there's something neat about a tip of the hat to good old paper.

Without the slashes in today's puzzle, my electronic solve was confusing, sometimes even frustrating. Hearing about Jim Horne's experience on paper elevated my view of the concept. It's neat (see grid below) how the backslash so clearly tells you that the doubled letters should be used in one order for Acrosses, and the other for Downs. OVERHEAD DOOR and BLOOD DRIVE look almost natural when presented like this.

It turns out that consecutive pairs of doubled letters within an entry are incredibly common. A quick program turned up hundreds of possibilities, and simple RegEx search on our finder located too many to display. Options are reduced by the constraint that there have to be pairs of entries, with the doubled letters switched, but even then it's not difficult.

Given the flexibility, I would have loved an extra layer, perhaps the doubled letters tied to something like DOUBLE O seven being a double-crosser? Or playing on TO (two) BE OR NOT TO BE? That'd BB a fun brainstorming session.

That said, Tracy and Tom did an admirable job of executing on this presentation, prioritizing colorful phrases for their themer choices, as well as working in wonderful bonuses like BUM A RIDE, TENOR SAX, ACID WASH, MOON PIES. Both are such pros that I wasn't at all surprised to encounter virtually no crossword glue. That's an outstanding display of craftsmanship.

Constructors of the world: note that Tom and Tracy wisely kept their word count at the max of 140. Don't be Icarus, flying too close to the sun with 138 or 136. A fantastic grid like this is imminently possible at 140, while 136 almost always requires serious compromises.

Overall, top-notch Sunday gridwork — everything I want in a Sunday NYT grid — but the concept left a lot of potential untapped.