When you are trying to come up with themes on a regular basis, you’ll take your ideas anywhere that you can get them. This one was very straightforward. I spotted a much-repeated topical phrase in the news which was exactly 15 letters long. Perfect! All I needed was three more phrases that were somehow similar, 68 other interesting words and 36 black squares to fill in the rest of the white space in the grid, and I was set. Really, once you have the first 15 letters, it’s all clean sailing from there. 🙂 Well, in actually, the two of similar phrases ended up being thirteen letters long, which meant that the black squares didn’t fall into place as neatly as they should; the third similar phrase started playing hide-and-seek for a while; and then all the other words started getting uppity — so it was more like clear sailing through a piranha infested swamp. But still, in principle it was all nice and easy. And principles are important.
Title: All of the Above
Difficulty: Thursday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)