This puzzle is inspired by two events that happened yesterday!  One of them is referenced in the central answer in this grid, which then ties into a couple of other answers, as well as the puzzle's title (which, by the way, is almost but not quite  the same as my first entry in this "Grid 'n Play" series where I experiment with themeless grids). The other was Brian Thomas's crossword construction Twitch stream yesterday afternoon that taught me a lot about how to approach themeless grids and inspired me to try for a low word count puzzle. What you see above is the grid I ended up with: it has 62 words (yay), 46 black squares (meh), and an average word length of 5.77.  It has standard rotational symmetry, but it almost  looks like it has diagonal symmetry. In fact, if you just slide one pair of those pyramids over one step, then you get a grid that is symmetric across both  diagonals . Be sure to check out Brian's Twitch ( link here ) and his blog ( link...

  This themeless puzzle is an ol' 68er , which is not as low as tons of amazing puzzles out there (including Paolo Pasco's recent ol' 62er ) but is the lowest I've managed to pull off decently enough that I'm willing to share here. I'm categorizing this in the Grid 'n Play  series because I took this grid from the xwordinfo database and modified it ever so slightly, then filled it in, as opposed to starting with some entries and building the grid from there. Specifically, the grid for this Caleb Madison puzzle in the NYT on Friday, April 19, 2019  really caught my eye! I find the 3-blocks jutting in from the side and situated in the center rather pleasing, especially when paired with the short diagonal segments and tetromino pieces in the four corners. If you look carefully, you'll see that my grid here is only different in where those 3-blocks are placed. Caleb's grid staggers them so they're not all along the central row, creating stacks of 6...

This puzzle is inspired by some awesome work that other constructors have done lately in experimenting with grid shapes and symmetry. I want to shout out a few examples before introducing my puzzle: Matthew Stock ( Happy Little Puzzles ) has a recent themeless puzzle with translational symmetry , meaning the black squares consist of a few shapes that have been slid across/down the grid. (In mathematics, these are called "translations" , in contrast to "reflections" and "rotations" .) Check it out here in this link . Brian Thomas ( Puzzles That Need a Home ) has a recent themeless puzzle with diagonal symmetry , meaning the black squares are symmetric across the "main diagonal" of the grid (top-left to bottom-right). Check it out here in this link . (Side note: I actually have a puzzle with diagonal symmetry set for publication later this year! I'll say more about that here on the blog when the time comes...) Brooke Husic ( xwords by a ladee ...