More Iconic Than The Bean (midi, with Emma Sloan)

 Yes, it's another crossword! From me! Not even that long after the last one! Hoping to have some full sized puzzles up here soon too, but today I have a midi puzzle that I made with my sister. (This is the first puzzle she's made!) We got the idea for this puzzle last winter after doing another puzzle about local news that we didn't like very much. We then spent nearly 6 months failing to clue this puzzle, because she had to have the true A Crossword Rose constructing experience.

Title comes from this (spoiler-y) Tweet.

Puz | Crosshare

What's Your Type?

 So I have a confession to make: I haven't really made any crosswords in the last 3 months or so. It turns out that the combination of moving to a brand new city, starting a brand new job, and trying to find hobbies that will actually let me meet people pretty much leaves me with no time or creative energy, so you probably won't see my byline many places in the near future. I hope to be back at it at some point in the nebulous future, but until life settles a bit, I'm on a bit of a construction break.

(That said, if you like seeing my byline on things, I have one of my Puzzmo puzzles from this past summer running in an actual physical book! How cool is that!)

Anyways, what I always have is puzzles I made a bit ago and never clued. Today's puzzle is a midi I made over the summer. I was on a road trip when I came up with this theme. I thought of the first two themers almost instantly and then went through every other possible combination (with my friend in the driver's seat listening to all of them). This did not result in many possible themers (which means this is a tight theme set!), but it did result in a lot of things that sounded like drug names or obscure music genres.

This was test solved by Amy, who is an expert on the theme of this puzzle. Go do my Chicago-themed collab with her if you haven't done it yet!

Puz | Crosshare

Double Speak

 Welcome back to another year of A Crossword Rose, where legally, all I can say about this puzzle is that this blog officially does not advocate any real life crimes, but cool heist teams are pretty sweet. This is actually my second puzzle posted this year. The first was a collab with Dob on the Crossweird site, which you should definitely do if you haven't done it yet! I think it's my favorite theme I've ever made.

Today's puzzle is an entry to this month's Crosshare midi contest, which had a prompt that lent itself nicely to this 2-entry theme set. As is so often the way, I set out to clue this at an easy level, and then... wound up not doing that. So expect the typical Rose puzzle fare: some footholds but also a bit of trickier wordplay, some musical theater, some silly meme-ish clues, and one possibly unfair (but hopefully not too unfair) Lord of the Rings related crossing. Thanks to my sister for testing, and enjoy!

Puz file | Direct Crosshare link

No Bears

 I'm back--and not too long after the last puzzle! I usually am a slow-ish constructor, but I've been on a bit of a kick lately, so I have a proper 11x midi (a themed one, even!), and I may even be back soon-ish with a full-sized grid (but that one's still very much in progress, so don't hold your breath).

This puzzle was made as an entry to the Crosshare Discord's midi challenge, which is a soon to be monthly event where various constructors make 11x midis based on a given prompt. This month's prompt is the revealer in this puzzle, since I heard it and quickly had a somewhat silly theme concept. Said concept then went through several iterations to find one that works within an 11x  (since it turns out that constructing a traditionally themed 11x with a 10-letter revealer is not so easy), and in some ways this is more a proof of concept than anything. Mostly, I tried to focus on what makes a midi puzzle fun and packed the fill and especially the clues with things I like (TTRPGs! Sports anime! Taylor Swift! American Girl!), along with some fun wordplay.

Thanks to my sister, as usual, for test solving. Some spoiler-y construction and etymology talk below the puzzle.

Puz file for the bot | Direct Crosshare link

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Okay, spoilers from this point on. Don't say I didn't warn you.

One etymology "fun fact" that I see around the Internet is that the Arctic and Antarctica are derived from the Latin or Greek for "the one with bears" and "the one without bears". This, like many etymology fun facts, is only sort of true. It's true that these names originally stem from the Greek arktos meaning bear, but that's only because it's the origin of the Greek word arktikos for north, since the Ursa Major (or Great Bear) constellation is in the north, which then became the Latin arcticus and got combined with the prefix ant- to denote a place very far south. So really Antarctica is just the place in the opposite direction from Ursa Major, and it's just serendipitous that it is also the pole with no bears, but the etymology did make for a fun little theme.

My initial thought for this theme was to play more on the "opposite of bear" etymology and take phrases like BLACK COFFEE or POLAR OPPOSITES and switch the first word to its opposite to get themers like WHITE COFFEE clued in silly ways. This, however, posed two problems. First, this was absolutely not doable in an 11x, and the challenge is exclusively for 11x puzzles. I considered releasing two versions of this puzzle, one this midi version and another a 15x puzzle using my initial theme, until I ran into the second problem. It turns out there aren't that many bears that have opposites. BLACK to WHITE was an easy change, but what's the opposite of POLAR? Or BROWN? And what other bears even have good enough set phrases that I can play on them?

I wouldn't be surprised if a more skilled constructor could make a more clever version of the "no bears" concept (in 15x form and all!). Maybe I'll even become that more skilled constructor someday. As is, I hope that you found this version fun!