Jim Horne author page

Making a crossword theme like this is easy. All you do is write down all 195 world capitals and then see what phrases contain one of the cities, with one of 26 letters inserted into a random position with that city. If you're not willing to search several hundred thousand combinations, that's just plain lazy.

(I am lazy, so our Finder and some Python programming helped streamline the process.)

The K in KA-CHING! was our least flexible option. Jim and I debated mightily — is MARK O'MEARA or CYBERKNIFE a better option? My stepmother has undergone a cyberknife procedure, but I acknowledge that it sounds like a term dreamt up by a science fiction writer who time-traveled from the year of Mark O'Meara's birth.

Jim and I have had many fun collaborations before, but Sunday 140-word puzzles are a major league step up from triple-A 15x15s. It's daunting to fill a grid that's nearly as wide-open as a themeless — while having to work around a full set of seven themers.

I've found that the best approach to guiding along a newer constructor is to create a grid skeleton that chunks the canvas into smaller sections so that each region can be tackled one by one while heavily testing every area until you have 95% confidence that the entire grid can be filled with quality.

So, of course, I sent Jim a 120-word skeleton that was impossible to fill without using ancient Estonian monetary lingo, dropping a casual note that this should be easy for most anyone to fill.

Curious that even after nearly ten years, he's not TIRING OF me yet.

Jim Horne curates our Grid Art page, which is one of my favorites, so we figured, why not try to add something cool to it?

What, though? Plenty of crosswords have used black squares as grid art, even some that employed rare diagonal symmetry. My favorite was one depicting a kite, but there's been a host of animals, too, including fish, birds, panda, dog, and even a pinata. Lot of these are Bruce Haight's … Bruce ...

Hey, wait a second! Jim. Jim! Let me tell you all about Bruce Wayne's journey to becoming Batman. We'll start off with the comic book lore, move onto the new era where Batman fought Superman, continue into the early movie days, discuss the pros and cons of each of the four people who have been Robin, although there is controversy about the exact number—

Jim? Hello? Did your line accidentally get disconnected?

Originally this comic book nerd wanted to do a giant Bat Signal in the sky, but that felt a bit too obvious. It had nothing to do with the fact that all my Bat Signal attempts looked like Bane smashed his fists into the grid.

After noticing that WAYNE MANOR and THE BATCAVE were matching lengths, that felt like something! Until we realized that regular crossword symmetry would place THE BATCAVE in the opposite corner, not directly underneath. Mirror symmetry wouldn't work and Will Shortz dislikes up-down symmetry. Once we settled in on diagonal symmetry, the bats sort of emerged on their own.

Hopefully, solvers will notice the bats after uncovering THE BATCAVE. Or at least, that effort won't drive them batty.

The Joker made me say that.

I love working with Jim. He's thoughtful, brilliant, talented in so many arenas (check out his Hamilton cover band!), and best of all, funny. While we were working on this puzzle, I was endlessly amused by one of his clue suggestions for ARCHIMEDES: [One of his inventions really screwed things up].

His more risqué version: [The guy who invented screwing].

This particular themeless was borne out of a curiosity: what new 10-letter entries from our XWord Info Word List would make for great themeless seeds? (When it comes to themelesses, 8-10 letter entries are the easiest to build around, and there's a larger quantity of 10-letter entries compared to 8s and 9s.)

For several weeks, we culled out a sub-list, adding only entries that

1. were strong in their own right, and
2. had the potential for a clever clue (i.e., didn't require a straightforward definition).

I thought we'd be able to incorporate at least three seeds into this standard-ish sort of themeless grid, but only MARS LANDER and MBA STUDENT (go UW Huskies, class of 2002!) made it in. As we flowed the fill from right to left, it became apparent that we'd get more colorful / cleaner fill if we didn't fix anything further in place. So we didn't push it.

Hopefully, more seed entries from our list will show up soon! Jim and I are always working on something fun.