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When I first started bouldering—indoors, at a gym in Somerville, Massachusetts—I was struck by how closely my experience sending a problem tracked with how I solve��crossword puzzles. Often,��a stiff V3 could be unlocked with just the smallest input. “Turn your knee in a bit” or “match that pinch and then step up” might be the insight that unlocked an entire route.��It’s an elegant bit of symmetry that crossword solvers often refer to the first answer they’re able to enter into a puzzle as a “toehold.”��

Five letters for “Rapper Nicki” MINAJ!��And we’re off!

M-I-N-A-J. Just five boxes filled out of a couple hundred��in a standard crossword, but often��that toehold is all a solver needs to cruise through the rest of the grid. The J��turns out to be the first letter in JUMP SCARE, and that A��helps you see HAHA, and so on.����

I started constructing crosswords in earnest��the same year, 2016,��that I joined the climbing gym, and the two obsessions flourished together. My laptop’s keyboard became choked with chalk after months of building grids between attempts at whatever problem I was projecting. Look closely at some of my , and you’ll notice the climbing jargon that inevitably finds its way into my clues.

Eventually, I started writing bouldering-themed puzzles—including the one you see here—on a whiteboard at the gym. Occasionally, a climbing friend would watch me writing the clues below the grid��and say, “I’m bad at crosswords. I only know like two of these.”

(Spoiler alert!)

“Do you know this one?” I’d ask, pointing at “‘Free Solo’ subject Honnold.”��

“A-��-��-��!”

“Now this one,” I’d say, pointing at “Top of a grandfather’s face?”—three letters starting with the X from ALEX.����

“What does the question mark mean?”

“It means that one of the words has a double meaning.”

“O��. Oh! Grandfather like grandfather clock! It’s X-I-I!”��

“I thought you weren’t good at crosswords.”��

“I’m not. But the Honnold clue gave me a, like…”

“Toehold?”��