The Itsy-Bitsy Crossword Corner was born back in the halcyon days of October 2020, just 48 hours after meeting the woman I would one day marry. Hannah Hunt knew I enjoyed crossword puzzles, and she playfully dared me to write one for her via email at 9:31 on a Tuesday morning. By 11:26, my very first three-by-three puzzle was in her inbox.
The thrill of throwing nine letters together and still coming away with six distinct words was, and is, electric. Crafting clues that straddle the line between cleverness and coherence is much more demanding work. I assumed I would run out of ideas after a few puzzles, but we wrote, sent and solved little crosswords for months.
Fortunately, meeting HH also meant getting to know the town of Carbondale, and by extension, The Sopris Sun. Back then I lived in a town without its own paper. Every time I journeyed to the Roaring Fork Valley, I would seek out a yellow box and read columns by Jeannie Perry and Mayor Dan, check in on the Garfield County Commissioners’ meetings via Amy Hadden Marsh’s reporting, take delight in Brian Colley’s interstellar cartoons and enjoy the healthy smattering of letters-to-the-editor from Fred Malo, Bruno Kirchenwitz, et al. Still, I always yearned for more. I wanted a puzzle.
So I wrote my own private letter-to-then-editor Raleigh Burleigh and pitched a weekly crossword. We haggled over fonts and font sizes, puzzle acreage, what should be handwritten and what should not, and a few weeks later, The Itsy-Bitsy Crossword Corner debuted with Puzzle No. 001.
These days, I have a well established routine and write the puzzles in monthly batches. I keep a loose collection of three-by-three combinations that I jot down as marginalia at my day job, but that is where the willy-nilliness ends. As some of you may have noticed, each month begins with three-by-three puzzles, and as the month nears its end, we move to four-by-four, and, as of the summer of 2025, five-by-five puzzles. Each letter, word and clue goes into a multi-tabbed spreadsheet that would make Marie Kondo woozy. There, I check for originality and repetition. The goal is a weekly puzzle that rarely repeats words and never, ever repeats clues.
Now, as ever, HH is each and every puzzle’s first set of editorial eyeballs. She will tell me when my numbers are off, or when the clues are overly didactic, or when my wordplay falls flat. Just the other day we argued for 15 minutes over a pair of clues I wrote that followed the Will Shortz rulebook, yet didn’t truly work. I ended up changing the clues.
Some people look at a crossword puzzle and see an individual IQ test. My hope is that you, dear reader, see a journey. No, that’s overly dramatic. I hope you see a chance to wander with me, and weave the silly little threads of language that I’ve scattered to the wind back together. If a clue baffles you, ask a friend, or an aunt, or a passerby. There’s a chance they’ll be as confused as you are, but the conversation that you share might just lead to figuring it out.
In recognition of the collaborative spirit that good puzzles foster, I want to extend an invitation to any and all Sopris Sun puzzlers, whether you’ve been solving since No. 001, or just discovered No. 222 this very week. When the puzzle is too hard, let me know. When a clue is impossible, send me an email. If you have my number, give me a call (and leave a voicemail). If you find yourself jotting down a puzzle in the margins of your work notes, and a few clues come to mind, send them my way. I would love to give HH a break from all of the editorial nonsense I put her through, but more than that I would love to see what this community can create.
You can reach Luke Wander, the creator of the Itsy-Bitsy Crossword Corner, at itsybitsy@soprissun.com