Coming Together

Note: For anyone with potentially delicate sensibilities, this puzzle qualifies as a crassword!

Publishing puzzles two months in a row---take that, impostor syndrome!

Uh, wait, where did this image come from?

Randomly started thinking how terrible a theme idea this would be, and mentioned the only entry I'd been able to come up so far to Lily Geller, assuming it would just be a one-off joke. Then she came up with another one and made the idea actually seem plausible. So, when you realize what the theme is, please jot down your complaints and pop them in the mail to Lily Geller at 4 Privet Drive, Natick, MA 01760.

 
What does this even have to do with---ohhhh, that's terrible.

We had a lot of fun trying to come up with possible themers, but because of  constraints in the concept, it's a pretty narrow set, with some non-symmetrical orphans that just didn't seem to fit.  And since the concept really lives or dies based on whether the themers eventually click and give that "aha!" moment, we felt like we had to be strict on what was allowed, which ruled out a bunch of others.  I definitely love the final themer set, but the list of rejected entries also has some absolute gold. If only there was a good way to share them...

 
Well that's just juvenile.  I love it.

Thanks to Lily for brainstorming and vetting many, many iterations of the grid, as always, and to Brett Rose, Rob Becker, and Monica Iyer for a ton of good test-solving feedback.  It was especially hard to guess from inside the construction what would and wouldn't click with this one, so the theme and some cluing angles very much benefited from the extra tightening.  I also outright stole a couple clue ideas, no regerts.

This one's sneaky.

I would also like to make clear that I am NOT above emotional manipulation.  Please solve this for my birthday and let me know what you think.  Come on people, I wanna see at least one "OMG" and one disappointed "David." by the end of the day! 

You wouldn't want to disappoint this good bubbeleh, would you?

PDF
.PUZ 

Reply Guys

*yawn* I was just resting my eyes after that August post, did I miss anything important? 

Oof, been a while since I posted anything---just lucky that I don't have any subscribers to be disappointed in me. I think between pandemic and the election all of my fun productivity energy got emptied, but I'm starting to circle back to half- or mostly-finished puzzles from 2020, and check all those indecipherable notes I've been leaving myself about new theme ideas. So I'll try and get back in the habit for 2021, at least one *something* a month. Today I've got a collab with Jesse Lansner!

PUZ File

PDF File:

Solution:

The name of today's puzzle, "Reply Guys," is obviously taken from our fledgling tag team wrestling duo. We're terrible. But I'm glad we were able to add to the current trend of puzzles that started as fun, dumb ideas on Crossword Twitter, where a crowdsource or joke can quickly turn into a surprisingly legit joint for The Blogs(TM).

#WomeninSTEM get a lot of “Reply Guys” who repeat the same unhelpful comments.@shrewshrew and I (a woman & a man in science) have attempted to catalog those replies, to save us all the trouble of writing new responses every time.

presenting THE NINE TYPES OF REPLY GUYS

(1/n) pic.twitter.com/0ewNRJloLu

— Scott Barolo (@sbarolo) September 3, 2018

The idea for this one got bounced around a year and a half ago.  For an idea of the timeline, we had a themer set within hours, a grid for the themers within days, and then *checks notes* 8 months to fill the grid?!  Okay, it's possible we put this one on the back-back-back-back-burner.  But hopefully the end result is better because we took our time!  We split responsibilities on filling the (over-sized) grid and on cluing, so the end result should be a pretty good blend of our styles.  And without a deadline, we managed to squash some late-arising dupes and a couple gluey entries with a helper square that ONLY made us rejigger the literal central core of the grid.  Easy peasy!

Make sure to let us know "Thanks, I hate it" in the comments and on Twitter!

Also, here's a puppy.