Hope this thing elicited just as much "17-Across!" as "18-Across!" while solving. Happy April Fools, the best holiday in puzzledom!
Shoutout to the late, great constructor Henry Hook for inspiring this one — featuring a longtime favorite band as a themer — and all the other fun puzzles that have riffed off overfamiliar clue-speak over the years. I'd always wanted to make something similar.
A variation on Henry's "with" trick seemed like a good starting point, though I never got very far. Then one day I randomly discovered the IN ITSELF / "Inits." + ELF find, and realized I could tie it together with Henry's trick and other related wordplay. Each answer would be its own joke, so the solve could twist your brain all the way through. And I figured that having ELF appear as a grid answer — as opposed to the simpler [Inits. before elf] — would best disguise the gimmick.
As I continued to brainstorm other ideas, I figured that constructing the grid would go smoothly, given the flexibility:
- I could use an answer like INHERENTLY and INTRINSICALLY instead of ESSENTIALLY.
- The "with" trick could be modified in both answer and clue ("with OVER," "with FOR," etc).
- When the "in slang" / SLA___NG wordplay came to me, I could use MBA instead of MMI, for SLA(M-BA)NG, and then an answer in the grid like ACTION-PACKED.
But "and OTHERS"? That bit of wordplay took forever to flesh out. In fact, the elaborate combo of 64-/65-Across, a now-cherry on top of all the trickery, came only by dumb luck! I'd practically given up at one point, having been unable to find a single fair crossword answer to proceed "OTHERS" ... pretty remarkable that two, STE and PBR, saved the day.
BLENDED FAMILY, though, felt like the only real option to associate with this "stepbrothers" find. What else was both on target and in the language? And STE / PBR needed to be side by side in the grid, so solvers could clearly see their combination. Maybe ELF and another 3-letter themer could pair symmetrically opposite those two, and the last could sit squarely in the center?
Before I knew it, I was racking up constraints — and especially pesky shorter ones — which forced the grid skeleton you see now. It contains a bit more 3s and 4s than I like, which explains a slight crossword-y feel in things like B-TEN, OLA, both TV AD and AD REPS, RKO, etc. But I'm hoping the positives still outweigh the minuses in things like BBQS / QUIZ / SONGZ (a debut?!), DOORMAN and its clue, the two 10s, and fun words like TONIGHT, SPIRAL, ORANGE, SAMMY, SLIME, NOODGE, etc.
Now, did you enjoy the puzzle? Hope the answer isn't [No. after 1-Across]!