1D. Another debut is this bit of meme-speak that I deduced fairly quickly but had heretofore misunderstood. A “Block of text duplicated and reposted online, in internet slang,” is COPYPASTA, a term that originated somewhere in the murkier depths of the web in 2006 or so. I had always thought this term was a way to call someone out for being lazy or even for plagiarizing, but it seems to actually involve some effort to be sly or surreal, at least in some cases.
10D. The question mark in “Focal length?” implies wordplay, of course, but I still searched for a vision pun rather than a quip on measuring one’s ATTENTION SPAN.
31D. This is wholesome wordplay, but I failed the Rorschach test in “Fair hits?” and figured that the “hits” concerned were probably murders for hire. Instead, they are popular crowd-pleasers at any festive outdoor occasion: PONY RIDES.
Constructor Notes
Rachel: Hello, Wordplay! It has been a while! I’m glad to be back in The Times with Christina, who is a fantastic constructor (and editor!). This puzzle collaboration began after I used the word CROMULENT to describe a word that Christina and her co-constructor, Caitlin Reid, used in their banger June 30, 2022, puzzle. (Our working title was “A Perfectly Cromulent Themeless.”) Christina had the brilliant idea to use a diagonal grid, and we split the construction and cluing 50-50. I hope you enjoy the solve! P.S., my mom says hi.
Christina: As Rachel mentions, she used the word CROMULENT in her Wordplay write-up of one of my puzzles last summer. I had been in the middle of making a themeless puzzle featuring the entry, but it just wasn’t coming together. I reached out to say how happy I was to see her use the word CROMULENT, and that I wanted to put it in a puzzle some day in an effort to embiggen people’s vocabulary. She wrote back that the word sounded like a seed for a collaboration. Two heads were definitely better than one, and it was fun pulling this one together!
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