What do these words and phrases have in common?
PLAN
DOMINATE
KINGDOM
IN A TEST
PLANKING
RETCH
STRETCH
In a sense, what they have in common is each other. They can be arranged in a row that spells out half of them when read one way, and the other half when read the other, like so:
PLANKINGDOMINATESTRETCH - PLANKING, DOMINATE, STRETCH
PLANKINGDOMINATESTRETCH - PLAN, KINGDOM, IN A TEST, RETCH
This is a short example of knitted strings, for lack of a better term. Longer examples, involving more than twenty-eight words each, serve as the gray “spine” for most of the Ubercross K, going up and down the vertical part of the “K” on the left.
One more grayed-out answer bridges that vertical part with the diagonal “arms” on its right, forking in three different directions as it presents three different scenarios built around one of the best-known…and groaniest…knock-knock jokes. But that one’s not a knitted string, so it’s not relevant otherwise.
This experimental format is closely related to the snake charmer, a variant word puzzle I’ve seen now and again over the years. The only difference between the two is that instead of two strings, the words and phrases “loop” into a single repeating string, as in…
OKINGDOMINATESTRETCHGOALONGOKING…
OKINGDOMINATESTRETCHGOALONGOKING…
OK-ING, DOMINATE, STRETCH GOAL, ON GO, KINGDOM, IN A TEST, RETCH, GO ALONG…OKING, DOMINATE…
This longer example is from Redhead64, who posts many lesser-known puzzles on his blog and does have a Patreon, should that interest you. Starting with the “1” up top, the answers are SLYTHERIN (the snake-loving house in Harry Potter, appropriately), GERBIL, LIONSGATE, AUSTIN, GRAYISH, MAELSTROM, BOLIVIA, COMMISSIONS, TAINA (TV series), BLEAR, CHIEF, RECKLESSLY, THE RINGER, BILLIONS, GATEAU, STINGRAY, ISHMAEL, STROMBOLI, VIACOM, MISSION, STAINABLE, ARCHIE, FRECKLES.
Naturally, I considered putting some kind of snake-charmer-like design in the S puzzle, but I wasn’t sure I could handle anything that wiggly on the Ubercross scale. Doing the knitted strings as simple verticals was all I wanted to attempt, though it emboldened me enough to try a trickier configuration with O.
But that’s a few sections later.
For a knitted string or snake charmer, you want to make the overlaps robust, with as few one-letter overlaps as possible. The previous examples have one each, at ON GO and OKING, then at COMMISSIONS and STAINABLE. I would’ve avoided mine if I’d spent a little more time on it, and I’d be willing to bet Redhead64 would say the same.
Big overlaps are good, but only if there’s no shared meaning between the overlappers. CARD GAME and GAME OF CHANCE would be a little too close, though PRE-GAME, with its “Drink beforehand” meaning, might be sufficiently different from GAME THEORY. And it’d certainly be different enough from GAMETES.
And GAMETES strikes me as likely a better choice—certainly a safer choice—because far more unrelated words and phrases begin with TES than do with THEORY.
But the safest choice is not always the better choice. For instance, Redhead64 picked ISHMAEL. -ISH is the ending of a lot of words, of course…but MAEL- as a starter doesn’t give you many options. In fact, there’s really only one: MAELSTROM. But just as in crossword design, uncommon letter-configurations—and uncommon letters—are a little more attention-getting for how uncommon they are. You don’t see the least common letters—Q, Z, J, X—in snake charmers very often…
SHEET ANCHOR, DATAHUB, RISQUE, ST. LO, VEST, JOHNSON, NETIZENS, AID STATION, OFFICEMAX, IMPRIMATUR, BANSHEE, TAN, CHORDATA, HUBRIS, QUESTLOVE, ST. JOHN, SONNETIZE, NSAIDS, TATI, ON-OFF, ICE, MAXIM, PRIMA, TURBAN, SHEET ANCHOR…
…but they add a little sparkle when you do.