With apologies for the title clue, my latest themeless offering. Happy weekend to all!

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 Themed puzzle tonight that I basically made on a whim after having an idea in the shower. (Which only BARELY separates it from any of the other puzzles I've ever made.) I more or less leaned into a bunch of proper nouns relating to things that interest me personally, but the wonderful Chris Adams did a test solve and pushed me to make a couple things more fair, so hopefully the result is reasonably smooth. Puz and applet solve after the break. Enjoy!
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New puzzle day! I *love* some of the clues in here, and very much hope you enjoy. Feel free to let me know what you think!

Many thanks to puzzle bestie Rafa for test solving.
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I've been stalling out on a couple of in-progress themed puzzles that I have high hopes for, so for a change of pace I tucked into a challenging themeless - 11x so that I could turn it out a bit more quickly - and really enjoyed the process. I hope it makes for a fun solve! Feedback welcome.

Thanks to Alex Boisvert for being a wonderful test-solver and making this puzzle better!
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Gonna be a busy Saturday over here in the house of schmate. Please enjoy this silly little puzzle :)

Thank you to Kim Vu and Abigail Noy for test-solving!
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This collaboration began with a tweet:
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Mike replied with a friendly explanation, a link to more info, a DM with even MORE info, and an invitation to collab on a midi, which when you consider that this literally came out of me saying I didn't even know what a p&a puzzle WAS, was pretty generous.

If you're new to this puzzle form, I'll refer you to Mike's tweets for a sincere explanation. Since I am no expert, I will simply say that they are half anagram clues where you don't have to look for Pre-Approved Anagram Indicators, and half the type of "bad" pun that in a regular crossword I would follow with about five question marks (i.e., one of my favorite types of clues).

Mike was a total and complete joy to work with throughout this process, and I'm super-duper happy with the puzzle we put together - really fun with a definite indie vibe. Enjoy!

More from Mike:

What Kate describes as an act of generosity was mostly just me being really excited about the possibility of collaborating with her. Her extremely good clue-writing for standard puzzles unsurprisingly translated into extremely good clue-writing for p&a puzzles, and I really love the result - enjoy!
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Crossworld achievement unlocked this week via collaboration with Christopher Adams! Christopher is brilliant in a way that makes  me want to lie about, e.g., having just this summer realized that "Adam Ant" = "adamant," or the fact that I *barely* get the clue he wrote for 20-Down. (Please don't tell him. I want him to think that I am smart.) The timing of this is fortuitous, because Christopher just released a puzzle SUITE (OOOoooOOO) which you can purchase on his site! (Humblebrag: I totally understand the meaning of the suite's title. #math)

The idea for (and our collaboration on) this puzzle was born in the chat of one of Chris Piuma's Twitch streams, which Christopher followed up with a cute little 12x14 grid that we've managed to shove about a zillion words of cluing into. I think the resulting puzzle might be fairly hard, depending on your cultural knowledge base, but/and there are some FIRE clues in there, so I hope you persevere and enjoy!

Christopher says:
I don't have much to add to that! This has been absolutely fun, Kate was exceptionally wonderful to work with, and all the best  clues are hers (Ed. note: agree to disagree).

Happy solving!

Phew, it's been a minute since I made a solo puzzle. But I've gotten to work on a ton of fantastic collaborative efforts! To wit:

A themed puzzle with the brilliant and lovely Alex Boisvert (extremely fun theme was all Alex, I loved working on it with him)

A themeless with the inimitable Norah Sharpe, hosted by the very good folks over at Crossweird (Norah churned out that grid in like an hour and sent it over and I was like YES)

​A themeless with Brian Thomas as part of the incredible These Puzzles Fund Abortion effort spearheaded by Rachel Fabi (I clued this in some sort of highly enjoyable fugue state)

A themed puzzle with Rachel Fabi herself (Longer side note here: any and all compliments for this little number belong to Rachel, along with my deep, deep gratitude for inviting me to work with her back in April when I had absolutely NO construction experience. If she hadn't been such a mensch when I asked her to look at my first-ever puzzle, would I ever have created another one?!)

If you solved any of these, I hope you enjoyed them!

So without further ado, here is my latest! It's a themeless 66-worder anchored around a couple of 14s, and it's a smidge on the hard side. Many thanks to Will Nediger and Alex Boisvert for test-solving and providing much thoughtful feedback. I truly love this one, and hope you do, too!

Well color me delighted, Brian Thomas of Puzzles That Need a Home made a puzzle that needed a home! Brian and I grew up in the same hometown, so it feels cosmically appropriate to be crossword buddies. I'm chuffed he let me adopt this this puzzle, which is SUCH A HOOT. Enjoy!

Brian's constructor notes: constructor notes are for squares

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The inspiration for this puzzle veritably fell out of the sky and bopped us on the heads. I don't want to say more and spoil it!

What I will say is that this puzzle was a much-sought-after collaboration with Rebecca Goldstein! With respect to the many hyper-talented theme specialists out there, I think Rebecca may be my favorite constructor of themed puzzles out there right now. Her recent Inkubator puzzle, "It's a Rap," and her guest puzzle on Just Gridding, "I Could Go Either Way," are two fab ones that come to mind, and she also has the USA Today crossword today. Rebecca is the genius who wrestled this puzzle's constraints into a fun, clean grid (I can say that because it wasn't my work). She was SO much fun to work with.

More from Rebecca:

Super grateful to Kate for 1) inviting me to collaborate, 2) the existence of her blog so that puzzles like this can exist, and 3) accidentally (?) coming up with the idea for this puzzle. I had an absolute blast working on this grid with her and hope you enjoy solving!

Puzzle (and puz) after the jump, as well a little spoilery postscript you can check out after solving, if you're interested in the origin story :) Thank you to the inimitable Rachel Fabi for test-solving!