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...

Yes, two new puzzles today! I've been feeling inspired to try making more themeless puzzles because of some recent experiences: 1) participating in the #BOSWORDS  Spring Themeless League (just Choppy clues for me!) and 2) watching a Twitch stream of people collaboratively writing clues for a themeless puzzle. Both of those have completely blown my mind this week. (Before starting Boswords two weeks ago, I didn't even know what Twitch was! 🤷‍♂️) I'm working on some 15x15 themeless puzzles, but none of them are quite ready to share, so I thought I'd start with a smaller grid. I took one of the 10x10 grids I used often in my book of "Mini Math Crosswords" [*] with two length-10 themers, and I just cut out one pair of black squares, so now there are two stacks of two parallel 10s with another pair of 10s running perpendicular to both of those stacks. My plan is to use this grid (and other variations) to practice making good, snappy fill and writing tough clues. ...