by Sarah Sinclair & Ross Trudeau

[.puz][PDF][Solution] Difficulty: 3.25/5

Do forgive a brief post today; Jessie and I are on our honeymoon in Indonesia! It’s the platitude of platitudes to say that one’s wedding day is the best day of his life, but in all sincerity: last Saturday was the best day of my life. I wish love and joy in equal measure to everyone reading this.

A couple thoughts (and SPOILERS!) from Sarah and myself on “Aerial Surveillance” below.

Sarah: I’m thrilled to be making my Rosswords debut (I’m in very illustrious company)! Ross and I met on Twitter last year after I started sharing my NYT Games knit hats online. He did an amazing job teaching me the ropes of construction, and in exchange I was very happy to provide some homemade knit goods! This is our second puzzle together (our first was published in Universal last month). Ross came up with the (hilarious!) theme, and I did most of the fill. It was very important to me that YEET would get in there! (I still cherish the dream of debuting it in an NYT puzzle.) I had a lot of fun writing clues that reflected my interests too; I hope you enjoy the references in clues like 34-Across, 32-Down, and 45-Down. Thanks, and enjoy the puzzle!

Ross: Honestly, the only other option we found that felt halfway decent was the GOLDEN GOOSE of fairy tale, but that was… an actual goose! Just… gold-colored. So with 3 theme answers that don’t play nicely with a revealer of awkward length like BIRDS AREN’T REAL (14), you cross your fingers and hope an interlock will work. Blind pigs and truffles, right?

Sarah was a lot of fun to work with on this grid. Follow her on twitter, where she regularly drops amazing new knitwear!

Happy solving, friends.

-Ross