Jessie Trudeau author page

★ This one climbs my ranks as one of the most memorable Sundays in years. I fondly remember my bafflement-flipping-to-delight moment when uncovering a column of Is that acted as the web for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Today's column of Hs so perfectly representing a LADDER might be even more amazing!

(You can find other repeated-letter themes using our Finder, including a series of Is representing a jungle vine and another one depicting a fishing line.)

Look at all the levels that make this puzzle rise to the heavens:

Visual of the ladder. Such creative use of a capital letter. Wish I'd Thought of That.

So many entries that aptly climb the ladder. I would have come up with HOUSE PAINTER. Then having to come up with a matching entry of length (7,5) for symmetry? I'd have given up. CHIMNEY SWEEP is excellent.

Perfect revealer placement. The fact that the H of CLIMBS THE LADDER is in its exact center, so it could be placed dead center of the grid? That's enough to make you take up religion. (I never doubted you once, oh great Crucivera! But maybe you could spread your bolts of inspiration around to more than just Jessie and Ross?)

Threading themers through a central down makes for incredibly difficult gridwork, since the regions around intersections get highly constrained. There's a bit of I MET / SO A right off the bat, but in total, such care in filling. NICE JOB is quite an understatement.

A typical Sunday 140-worder will have about a dozen gluey bits, so finishing with about eight minor dings shows such resilience; never saying it's good enough.

Ross and I are both rock climbers, and this puzzle is a route I'd steer every one of my friends to try.

★ Jessie and Ross! With all due respect to my dear wife, who's turned to the Dark Side of word games (she's unapologetically obsessed with the Spelling Bee and Wordle), I bend the knee to today's royal couple of crosswords.

Fun Sunday puzzle to celebrate their big day, too. I enjoyed figuring out that the five roads led to Rome, and I appreciated the four ways they hid ROME: BICHROME, AERODROME, ETHAN FROME, IMPOSTER SYNDROME. I wouldn't have guessed there were so many different types of *ROME entries. The only other strong one I could find was PALINDROME, but not all solvers are selihphiles.

What made the puzzle stand out was its technical merits. I've had many people ask me about ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME puzzle ideas, but figuring out how to pull one off has always been the trouble. Note Jessie and Ross's use of diagonal symmetry, which allowed them to so elegantly intersect a road and a *ROME entry at their ends (we've highlighted the themers to illuminate the skeleton). It's a perfect way to execute the sense of finality carried by the ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME revealer.

Diagonal symmetry allows for some flashy touches, too. Given that some themers are shorties and/or not that colorful — BICHROME feels a bit black and white, for example — spicing up the grid is a great thing. Although you risk muddying up what is theme and what is not, the sparkle of HERO WORSHIPPER and RORSCHACH CARDS is well worth it. Diagonal symmetry plus the short themers in the upper left make this possible.

Certainly no IMPOSTER SYNDROME, Jessie and Ross are the REAL DEAL, the crossworld's residents of PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. I can't wait to see what delights they bring us in the future.

SORRY NO RETURNS … how did Jessie and Ross know about my tennis game? I thought I was halfway decent until ten years ago when a 6'6" friend with a wicked 100+ mph spin serve set me straight, in straight sets.

After that, I decided tennis was a racket.

ONE-WAY TRIPS worked as well, although it has a similar meaning to the tennis aces. (I should have written a witty comeback here, but that wouldn't go with today's theme.)

BAD INVESTMENTS never sit right with me, so these days index investing (supported by the SPIVA studies) is my jam. This themer also didn't land as squarely as the others since most BAD INVESTMENTS have returns that are less than the benchmark but aren't exactly zero. Even in bankruptcies, investors often scrape out pennies by negotiating haircuts on the—

(Jim Horne interrupted to suggest that I hit RETURN.)

Great bonuses, as I've come to expect from both Jessie and Ross. Adjacent long Downs are usually easy if they run through one themer, but two is a different story. LOCAL PRIDE / LORD IT OVER with no surrounding glue is an A+ result. Carefully placing SERVICE ACE so the friendly E and R could end those long Downs was smart.

Not as stellar in the opposite corner, with SULFA / LOCI a tough crossing. Still, IDIOT-PROOF / PERSIAN CAT is worth that price, given this is a mid-week puzzle. At least, it's worth it to those who got that square correct.

Not a standout of its genre, but a fun "different meanings" theme elevated by so many delights in the fill.

Fun idea, I CAN SHOW / YOU / THE WORLD pointing to entries that can literally show you a view of the world (Earth). PALE BLUE DOT is an awe-inspiring pic of the Earth from space, show how tiny we are in the grand scope of the universe.

POCKET ATLAS also shows (individual parts of) the world, although I wondered why a pocket atlas, not just a regular atlas? I imagine it's because ATLAS is too short to act as a feature entry — tossing in POCKET felt inelegant. Would ROAD ATLAS be any better … maybe?

I hitched on PLANETARIUM. It's been a while since I've been to a PLANETARIUM (been a while since I've been anywhere; sigh), but all my memories revolve around images of stars and space. If you loosen the definition of WORLD, it does work better.

Hey, all four themers start with P, that's cool! POPEMOBILE … can show you the world by driving all over the place on his tours? It is bulletproof, so you can go everywhere, I suppose—

Huh? The theme entry is not POPEMOBILE but GOOGLE EARTH, which is perfectly apt?

Also apt that I LOST was in the grid.

Part of me loves that there's so much bonus material in the grid, entries like SCAREDY CAT, DE NOVO, NO NAME. With a presentation like today's, though, I'd have preferred a less-is-more approach, allowing solvers to focus more on the themers.

It'd also have been great to avoid the awkward TWO TO. I get why it happened, with stacked SHOW/YOU/THE in the middle, and the revealer locked into PLANETARIUM and GOOGLE EARTH. Would WOT be any better, as in a Brit's "huh?" Maybe not, with ERENOW already in the grid. It might be possible to spread the three pieces, spacing them a row apart, but that's calling for a full grid redo.

Strong idea, playing on a (warning: ear worm ahead) catchy song. Some rough EDGES in implementation.

WOMEN OF LETTERS is a great revealer, perfectly tying together ELLE MACPHERSON, SANDRA OH, SAMANTHA BEE, and KAY HAGAN. A long memory for crosswords hurt my initial impression since a fantastic C.C. Burnikel puzzle and a FOURTH OF JULY theme immediately made me wonder what L O B K stood for.

I'm curious — what it would be like, to be a person who doesn't feel it necessary to spend two hours Googling LOBK and all 24 permutations of those letters?

I'm also curious how many unenlightened boors didn't know KAY HAGAN. Shame on us! I mean, ewe! Aw, GGGG!

Love the inclusion of SHE/HER as fill. Along with MADAM President, AURORA/EOS, I liked the celebration. A shame that this didn't run on March 1^st.

Five themers bookended by two 14s usually means trouble. The five phrases can only get one row of spacing from each other, and that squishing-in constraint forces so many down answers to cross multiple themers. It all starts with the central 28-Down, which often creates an unfillable letter pattern. Thankfully, Jessie and Ross had some flexibility, and S?T?N has several fine options.

Bonus fill is then the next issue since long downs will have to run through three themers, having to fit inflexible letter patterns. Great results in GATORADE, SPY NOVEL, and TANGENTS.

Trying to choose great long fill while simultaneously avoiding gloopy short fill is a further challenge. It's near impossible to escape a layout like this without some ALEE SHA (and BRULEE ASSAM could be off-putting for newbs), but that's fairly minor.

Careful, meticulous work, with an outstanding result; excellent debut. I applaud Ross's efforts to help new constructors publish their voices. If I hadn't been tapped out on letter homophones, this could have been in the POW! running.