Testing, testing

Busy times here at Cross Nerd HQ. Final exam on Monday for which I'm woefully under-prepared, a gig with a new band on Friday for which we're woefully under-prepared, and moving day on Wednesday for which... well, you get the idea. Luckily some of my old crap is still in boxes from the last time I moved. My new crap maybe I'll just throw out. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I probably won't be posting a puzzle next week. You might have noticed that these posts having been getting farther and farther from their original Tuesday morning timeslot with every passing week. Hopefully I can catch up with this short break. Actually, I'm fine with posting sometime around the middle of the week and not worrying too much about a fixed schedule, but I do worry about the quality suffering. Last week's puzzle contained a few grievous errors and I may have missed the mark a bit with the cluing. A few very fine solvers found it tougher than usual and a little lackluster so I've got to up my game.

But not this week! A few unfortunate crossings and some substandard fill in this one, I'm afraid, although I think there's some fun stuff in there too. Plus, there's a bit of a mini theme going on. I wanted to flesh it out into a full theme, but I couldn't think of two more tight answers (had one that kind of worked, though). Anyway, see what you think.

More words, crossed and otherwise, in two weeks.

Puzzle: Freestyle #33
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