When I was a night clerk at Sedona Winds Independent Living Retirement Community, I had about 5 hours of work–preparing menus, folding napkins and setting tables, collecting bags of trash and meal trays from outside resident doors, preparing  coffee and distributing newspapers, plus other odd tasks–in an eight-hour shift. The rest of my shift my main job was to stay awake and alert in case of emergencies and/or phone calls or visits from residents. So I formed the habit of drawing 15×15 grids, because the N.Y. Times and LA Times crossword puzzles were 15×15. Sometimes I tried my hand at crossword puzzle construction. Two such efforts, never finished, are on this page.

Crossword grids make good backgrounds for artwork, and I’ve used them suchwise many times. Here I have tried to make them more like main characters.