Today's puzzle is from Michael Kleber, a co-worker of mine. We stumbled upon each other after me and Quiara were taking a stab at The Crossword Puzzle Problem, and saw that Michael had solved it. (You might recognize him from the "why" page on this site.) I'm very glad that Quiara showed me The Crossword Puzzle Problem, as that was the inspiration for this site, and also glad that Michael chipped in this puzzle!

Michael says: "I'm a mathematician by training and a software engineer by profession-- I work for Google, on the Chrome browser. Two years ago, the 538 Riddler's puzzle of the week asked how many 15x15 crossword grid shapes followed the standard rules, and I was the person who actually counted to 404 trillion on my fingers and toes. When Malaika looked at the same question and hit on running through the 7x7's in a year, I was smitten. Stay home if you at all can, wear a mask, watch the inauguration, do crosswords."