27: strong feelings

new puzzle! well, it was new three days ago. i need to work on actually posting here on time lol. anyway, this puzzle's for the crosshare february 2022 midi challenge, whose theme is "love". enjoy!

thoughts (warning: spoilers)

this idiom dictionary has quickly become an invaluable crossword resource for me. i got the puzzle idea by browsing the "love" idioms, looking for something that i could turn into a theme. i saw "love conquers all", and thought it would be perfect, especially since CONQUERSALL would fit perfectly as a midi spanner.

originally i was going to use words that only incidentally contained the string of letters ALL, but also made sense when you replaced ALL with LOVE, like GALL->GLOVE and CALL->CLOVE. i couldn't find anything else besides those two, though. i considered using arbitrary words containing ALL, even if it turned into nonsense when ALL became LOVE, but ultimately decided that was kind of weak. i then went the route of using phrases with the word ALL that also worked with LOVE in place of ALL. any tennis or table tennis score would work, and FIFTEENLOVE would pair nicely with the revealer. the only others i could find were "in all"->"in love", "my all"->"my love", "all you"->"love you", and the slightly peculiar "all done"->"loved one". initially i was disappointed that my only same-length themer choices were so short, but in retrospect i think anything longer would have made filling a nightmare.

the hardest part of filling was finding a grid shape that worked. helper squares were my best friend. once i settled on the grid shape, everything was easy to fill except the bottom right corner. originally, i didn't like the configuration that i would ultimately end up using---i didn't know what "LDR" was and the top suggestions clued it as an abbreviation for "leader", which i thought was really weak and also i don't like leaders lol. but then i learned that it could also stand for long-distance relationship, which was perfect because it tied into the theme. in the end i was very happy with how the puzzle turned out, especially all the "bonus" theme-related cluing scattered throughout the grid.