a very self-indulgent grid here because i want to (it's been a very weird ass month with many ups and downs) - lots of stuff *i* like and just overall filled to my sensibilities of what i like to see in puzzles. seeded with the 1A+14A pair, which had been both showing up next to each other very frequently in stuff i've been working on and are like possibly the most anna start to a stack ever. the clue for 38A is something i posted in crosscord once a while ago but i'm so proud of it and it deserves to be in a grid. apologies if it was spoiled for you!
speaking of my sensibilities, i've noticed one of those sensibilities is that i actually really like abbreviations in my 3s and 4s. to me, it seems like the corollary of how something like SEERESSES is really unsatisfying long fill - like that's just the stem SEER with a bunch of suffixes stapled on that happen to have friendly letters. you're only getting 4 letters of coolness value out of a 9 letter slot. therefore, something like 41A is actually 24 letters of coolness value in a 3 letter slot :). obviously there's still concerns of like solver experience and inferrability and the like, but i do think there's some sense to my thoughts here - would be curious to hear others' thoughts on this, especially when the heuristic i see most often is to make your short fill regular words as *often* as possible. been noodling on this thought for a while, but it still feels like a very raw opinion that needs some shaping before i can fully incorporate it into my personality and be annoying about it.