This puzzle is a 68-word themeless, with a bunch of things about it that are impressive in the XWordInfo sense - yes, as that thumbnail shows, there's a triple stack of 15s in its center, and also, without giving anything away, let's just say that this puzzle is an equal opportunity employer of consonants and vowels. It is also a fairly difficult puzzle, particularly if you're not on my wavelength - I packed this one full of references to popular culture that I like, some of which are not particularly mainstream. (Tragically for 34-Down, winning the Record of the Year Latin Grammy does not make you "white famous," nor does it make you "crossworthy," and, yes, I am pretending that the latter is not code for the former.) But I think the songs and records name-dropped here are worth a listen - hence why once you solve the puzzle there'll be links to all the songs I namedropped. Maybe someday I'll make a Spotify playlist with all the songs I namedropped in these puzzles? Would require me to have a Spotify account, so probably not. (Now, a last.fm playlist... haha, just kidding. Or am I?)
Incredibly, I have gone something like 15 months without posting a themeless on this blog. Weirdly, this is not because 2023 was a fallow year for me puzzle-wise, since I made at least fifty midis for Crossword Club alone. (I like the one I did from this Tuesday, incidentally.) Oh, and I got a grid published in the New York Times, finally. Twice, actually! Really, 2023 was a banner year for me in puzzles. I got to work behind the scenes at ACPT! I was (briefly) in the top 5 at Boswords and Lollapuzzoola!! Robyn Weintraub hugged me like, a dozen times!!!
But yes, QVXwordz has been sadly neglected over the past couple months. That's why my lofty goal for 2024 is to go "fifty-fifty" - by which I mean, I'm aiming to get fifty full-sized puzzles on the blog this year, and to sell fifty full-sized puzzles to various outlets. And you can help with that - I'm looking to collaborate with as many constructors as is feasible this year. So why don't you (is she gonna say the thing? is she gonna say the thing?) back me up here, y'all? Shoot me an e-mail and say "hey, Q, let's make a puzzle together!" and we'll work something out.
Anyway, hope you all like this puzzle. Big ups to John Kugelman and RandomSaucepan for testing this one. I'm still working out a schedule for weekly-ish posting - when I started the blog the only indie site that regularly posted on Thursdays was BEQ's, but now I'm wondering whether I should start posting on the weekend? We'll see.