It's been a while! I'll let my puzzle pals get right to it with their constructor notes:
From Brooke (@brookehus, @xandraladee):
One of the great things about crossword Twitter is its facilitation of new and amazing friendships. I'm so grateful for the friendships I've formed with Evan and Sid over the past few months, and I'll regularly text them fun clues I've come up with (a recent one: SMILE [What a street harasser might yell to a woman]). We also discuss the puzzles we solve, and as a former California resident I was both inspired by Tuesday's NYT puzzle and unsettled by its omission of a certain category of saints. In less than 24 hours, the three of us banded together to create a complementary, aggressively women's March-y puzzle. The collaboration, all virtual, was seamless and beautiful. After brainstorming theme entries with Evan, I made the initial full puzzle draft; Evan greatly improved the fill and then Sid and I hammered out my clues. Given the luxury of not having a corresponding print medium, I got really verbose here — I hope, in this case, the poetic license is appreciated.
From Evan (@evanpostlandia):
This puzzle was inspired by Amy Reynaldo’s commentary in response to the Tuesday, March 10, 2020 New York Times crossword. My original title idea was “Dear Santa…,” and Brooke and Sid immediately took to the concept. We took turns developing various facets of the puzzle, pinged it across our three respective time zones and completed it all within nine hours. I just love the vibe of this puzzle! Our cluing sensibilities have definitely been impacted by Erik Agard’s recent work at USA Today.
From Sid:
I'm so excited to run this puzzle with my friends and collaborators Brooke and Evan. Given that the Crossworld is celebrating a month of puzzles authored by women in some mainstream venues (Rebecca Falcon's brilliant idea), when Brooke and Evan pitched the idea for today's blog puzzle, I knew it needed to happen. 47-A is perhaps my favorite clue — and how many puzzles represent so many women that they feature two Australian actresses?
Hope you enjoy!