I had the idea for 17-Across burning a hole in my mixed metaphorical pocket and played around with a few themes using the same device but ultimately couldn’t make any of them work and so decided to just toss that one into a themeless. Having not done a 15x15 themeless in a while (since June of 2023 to be exact), it seemed like a good time to go that way anyway.

Some grids come together easily, some don’t. This one was closer to the latter although ultimately I was happy with where it ended up. After spending a lot of time writing GenX themed minis, I did my best to be as au courant as possible with the cluing here. Which, I acknowledge, is only somewhat there. But still… it’s the attempt that counts, right?

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or play using the in-line applet below:

counterclockwise