23: themeless midi 4

new puzzle! it's shaped like a Z, which is fun. difficulty: less evil than my previous midi.

thoughts (warning: spoilers)

this one came together pretty smoothly. i built the grid shape, then i ran the autofiller a bunch of times until i got a triple stack at the top that i liked and filled it in. i was considering removing the black squares in the central column, but it would have made it harder to construct and i wasn't in the mood to try to make it work lol. then i ran the autofiller a bunch more times until i got a triple stack at the bottom that i liked and filled it in. filling in the middle was easy---there were a lot of good possibilities to pick from.

the cluing is more fair than in my previous puzzle, i think. the main thing i worried about was the crossing of SALPARADISE with the slightly-obscure ARI and EPT, but hopefully those are gettable. i was very pleased with the clue i came up with for 20A.