Few things light up a cell biologist’s heart like the ingenious assembly of the mitotic spindle. Contemplating the intricacy of the kinetochore, the attachment point between the centromere and the microtubule apparatus that will divide up duplicated sister chromosomes, can bring tears to the eyes of lab-hardened researchers. Now a new paper by ASCB members Nigel J. Burroughs and Andrew McAinsh along with Chris A. Smith at the University of Warwick, UK, reveals a new side to kinetochores—they can swivel. Kinetochores come in pairs, an inner one that binds to the centromere and an outer one that forms a dynamic end-on attachment to microtubules emanating from the spindle poles. Using three-dimensional tracking, the researchers were able to measure the distance and the angle between inner/outer kinetochores, showing that the outer can swivel around the inner. Among other things, this may give outer kinetochores the mechanical flexibility to connect with microtubules on the far edges of the assembling spindle, the researchers say.