by Evelyn Rubin & Ross Trudeau
There’s a lot happening on the homefront right now. Jessie and I cooked a Thanksgiving spread for, uh, conservatively? Ten people. So now we have two weeks worth of leftovers and an ongoing challenge of frankensteining them into various culinary retreads. Yesterday we had sweet potato pancakes. I burn, I pine, I perish.
We’re also gearing up for a no-parents podded Christmas season, which means we’ll be watching Home Alone and Home Alone 2 on a recursive loops through January 1st. And in the meaning, we’re both leaning hard on our crossword friends for some Zoom socializing.
Enter: Evelyn Rubin, M.D. Some thoughts and spoilers from the doctor on our “Three Piece Bands” after the jump.
Evelyn: Happy to be making my debut here on Rossword Puzzles! This is not the first puzzle Ross and I have collaborated on. A little more than a year ago, I was a complete novice to the world of crossword constructing until discovering the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory and taking Ross up on his very generous offer to collaborate with previously unpublished constructors.
When Ross asked me if I would be interested in collaborating on a puzzle about bands, I said a thousand (er…three) times yes! Music is one of my favourite topics, and coming up with the bands in question was an exercise in wordplay all on its own. Not all of them could become themers (sorry, Right Said Fred), but we hope you enjoy the resulting choices.
This grid started out with a revealer (BREAKUP) in the middle, but proved impossible to fill that way. We debated whether or not to make it a 16×15 or 15×16 puzzle, to accommodate the higher number of black squares, but that caused some symmetry issues. We toyed with having THREE PIECE BANDS as a spanner, but decided it fit better as a title and pseudo-revealer. It still took multiple iterations and a complete puzzle overhaul to get to the final product you see here.
Thanks Ross, as always, for being such a top-notch collaborator. I can’t sing (pun intended) your praises enough.
Ross: And cheers to *Evelyn,* who’s becoming a consummate pro at this stuff of late. You can find a couple of our published grids in the “Publish Work” section above.
Happy solving, friends.
Hey, Doctor Rubin and Ross: Thanks for a fun solve! Clever idea a super cluing, both in the theme entries and fill. 15 and 37 Down are particularly super entries, but the whole puzzle sings (okay, yep, that was intended). And Bless. You. Both. for the proper spelling of 36 Across!
Bless you back! Evelyn and I have found an, ahem, harmonious collaborative relationship this year.
Thanks, Dr. Rubin and Ross. You were “instrumental” in providing the morning’s entertainment. Lots of fun!
We see what you did there, Jean. Tip o’ the hat right back!