Band Weaving

This past weekend at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Mike Shenk was honored for his long and deeply influential career in puzzles. Among his many achievements is the introduction of two mainstay variety crossword types:

• Marching Bands, in which two words read across each row, and then also wind clockwise around each concentric band.
• Spellweaving, in which words weave together in a dizzying diamond pattern.

Patrick Berry (an assured future honoree) made a tribute puzzle for Mike, and it is jaw-dropping. It is a Marching Bands grid AND ALSO a Spellweaving grid, overlapping significantly, so that a bunch of letters are used in both puzzles.

Those of you who solve crosswords regularly are likely familiar with the concept of “checked” and “unchecked” letters. In your typical daily crossword, every letter is “checked” — that is, it is used in an Across answer and also a Down answer. Sometimes a crossword might have an extra message appearing on the diagonal, in which case the letters in that message are “triple checked” — each one used in three times.

Most of the 35 letters in the overlap of Patrick Berry’s puzzle are QUADRUPLE CHECKED — used twice in the Marching Bands puzzle and then used twice more in the Spellweaving. That Patrick thought he could do this at all is audacious. That he succeeded as wildly as he did, making it look, as usual, like a matter of no particular consequence, is beyond bananas.

Patrick has now made the puzzle available in the Free Puzzles section of his Web site, A-Frame Games. Solve it and be amazed.