Adam Fromm author page

The idea came to me back when I started my puzzle "career" umpty-mumble years ago. I was working for the phone company back then, in a job that called for staring at a telephone keypad for hours on end and having nothing to do, so I guess it was destined to be. I've long loved the idea, but it took me a dozen-odd years to actually make it work, which means I either have great foresight or need to get out more. (I have my suspicions on that count.)

This was the fourth version of this grid I submitted. For the first one, I used buried spellings for the numbers as well as the letter combos (the TWO in NETWORK, for example); Will and team thought this was one trick too many, and suggested treating the numbers as straight-up rebuses instead. This also allowed me to add a fifth theme square, which is one of those horrid curses that tastes suspiciously like a blessing.

I stumbled through two more rejected drafts trying to cram everything in, a challenge in the same way that backing a school bus into your breakfast nook is a challenge, but I finally got it so the grid wasn't too disjointed and the fill wasn't too cringeworthy. I think fewer proper names would be a vast improvement, but beggars, choosers, and all that. Either way, it's done, it's decent, it's Autumn, life is grand.

The problem with having crossword-brain is that you can't turn it off. I might be nodding and making eye contact, but in my skull, it's all theme ideas and seed entries up in here. One day I spotted "Mexico/United States" in print somewhere, then noticed that if it weren't for a stray "i", you could read COUNTED across the break. From there, it was the inevitable, "Well, are there pairs of bordering countries that do work?" followed by the shock that yes, there are.

Before I took up construction, I didn't realize how much of the process is cost-benefit analysis, where the grid turns into a mob negotiator gnawing on a cigar and purring, "Say, that's a lovely word you've got there. What's it worth to ya?" There's almost always a trade-off: you can have that ultra-hip, cutting-edge entry, but it'll cost you a Danish seaport and a 1950's government acronym.

I ran into a ton of that here: is TIDE POD important enough to warrant DOGE and OENO in the same corner? Do you really want to stack NEWSCLIP and TEDCRUZ if it takes LUND to pull it off? And FLEABAG … well, there was no way I wasn't going to crowbar FLEABAG in there. (Seriously, go watch season 2. I'll wait.) It's the sort of temptation that gets me into trouble, and I still have no idea if I made the right call, but here we are, so I won't fret unduly.

I'm not sure why I decided to try burying a mini-theme in a 15-stack, aside from the not-always-advisable "just to see if I can" impulse. (For me, that usually turns into the regrettable crossword version of "hold my beer and watch this": four killer seed entries, surrounded by 20 medical abbreviations and three Peruvian tree frogs.)

I think it started by accident — I was tinkering with stack ideas, noticed I'd inadvertently thrown in two different military ranks on top of each other, and decided to steer into the skid. I do know that I got pretty lucky, finding spans that clicked with each other within a few tries, and from there I fought my usual angsty longing for the crunchiest fill imaginable, in favor of clean, crisp, and light on the word putty. Whether I succeeded on that count, I have no idea, but there's nothing that makes me cringe for a change, so I'll take it.

It would have been nice for the ranks to appear in proper order, with GENERAL at the top and PRIVATE at the bottom, but, well, beggars, choosers, and all that.

I wish I understood how my brain works. A decade ago I saw a Photoshop contest on the theme of "scary road signs," with entries including enforcing a speed limit of the square root of 666. I haven't the foggiest idea why my brain held onto that image, or why it dragged the memory out kicking and screaming ten years later just for the sake of generating a "root of all evil" pun. Once it did, though, and because every dang thing becomes a theme in this hobby, there was no way I wasn't going to run with it.

(It wasn't until writing this blurb that I went looking for the original image, only to discover that it actually showed the square root of 677. I give up, brain.)

This represents my second attempt at the concept after the first was rejected by Will, who liked the theme but not the execution; some but not all of the theme entries in that original go-around relied on homophones, like SINE OF THE TIMES (sin[AxB]) and HALF A GOOD DAY (.5 x 12/25), which proved inconsistent. The do-over is much tighter overall with a minimum of wince-and-hide-my-eyes fill, which isn't to say that I wouldn't love to gut the SW corner another six times.

The fill went relatively quickly, although the nipping and tucking portion of the process dragged on for quite a while. You'd think I'd have learned by now to hack away at the center first, where everything crashes into everything else Michael Bay-style, but old habits die hard. And yes, I was a math major before switching to English, which is as good an explanation not only for this puzzle but for why I do this in the first place. Such is life.

That corner is going to be the death of me. The first themeless I ever submitted seven or so years ago contained a variant of the HEBRIDES/AQUILINE/JUICEBOX/JACKASS stack seen here. That puzzle was declined, but I felt like I could do something more with all that Scrabbly goodness, which resulted in hours of grown-up whimpering and hair-pulling. (Lesson learned: symmetry means that for every cool wide-open section you pull off, you have to do it again on the other side.) By my count, this is the fourth time Will has seen that corner, which doesn't include the ten or so attempts I didn't waste a stamp on.

The right half is where most of the unique entries ended up, but I find the left half much more satisfying (though I'm perversely proud of BITEME). You can probably guess the stuff that makes me wince, like SAYA/ANNAS, which I'm calling the sticker price on finishing the mirror-image corner that lost me seven years of sleep. SLIVERING was once SLIVOVITZ, which I couldn't quite make work, not for lack of trying. And the HWY/AWS crossing was the least of several evils—I could have gone with AWL, changing MAZES to MAZEL, but I'd rather have an awkward three than a boring fill-in-the-blank five ("_______ tov"). Grit teeth, smile, carry on.

All in all, I'm pleased with how it finally turned out. This is my first published crossword in five years (and my first themeless ever), having quasi-retired out of frustration at not being able to build the puzzles I wanted to create. In the end, that expletive-deleted corner's potential was the ghost that brought me back into the game, and so for that I'll embrace my albatross warmly.