Today’s New York Times crossword takes its theme from the alternating one-way streets found throughout much of the grid layout of Manhattan, although here the crossword grid alternates the direction of both the rows and the columns:
Will Shortz and the crossword word have in mind other metaphors for this gridlock-inspired puzzle like weaving and even Escherian geometry, but when I see these alphabetic switchbacks, I think of boustrophedon, an ancient writing practice named for the back-and-forth path of oxen ploughing a field—the ancient Cretan Gortyn Code is just one of many examples:
via Wikipedia user PRA, CC BY-SA 3.0
Perhaps sometime they’ll toss in some Optatianus-style word-search aesthetics, too….