19: themeless midi 2

all the cool kids have crossword blogs so i made one too. i figure i can use it to ramble about my construction process and whatever else i feel like. anyway, here's a midi that i think is pretty tricky. enjoy :)

thoughts (warning: spoilers)

the seed entry here was GROWTHSPURT. the idea for that clue started when i was trying to come up with a clever clue for 14A of just the grid #4 (minor spoiler warning for that puzzle). i thought of "too big for one's britches?", which didn't really work, but i thought "hmm, i'm sure you could make a cute clue with that phrase, i'll keep it in mind for my own puzzles." later, i came up with the 30A clue for GROWTHSPURT, which was nice because it's the perfect length for a midi stack.

i committed to the layout pretty early on. i considered putting an extra black square in the NE/SW corners, but the full double triple-stack was too aesthetically pleasing to pass up. after trying GROWTHSPURT in several different places, i found a decent stack having it in the very bottom row. for the top, SQUAREPANTS came to me randomly, and i let autofill work its magic for the other two.

filling the middle was tricky. what ended up making the left-middle work was finding a clever clue to justify BRANG. the right-middle was also hard—the autofiller really wanted NAILERS for 9D and NAILTIP for 17D, but i didn't want NAIL in there twice, so i had to go rogue. i sort of worried about the solvability of the FINI/TSOTSI/SENET/LTE intersections—i considered making the LTE clue easier, but ultimately decided it was fine as is.

i almost clued 24A as "deadline phrase", even though PHRASE appears in the answer to 12A. i've made this faux pas multiple times in the past, so i'm glad i caught it before publishing this time :D