Welcome to Crossbirds! We've ALIT beside Sid Sivakumar (@sid_sivakumar) who, in just the last three months, made his debut (6/22), dibut (8/8), and tribut (9/3) in the New York Times; celebrated the yearniversary of his indie crossword blog, Sid's Grids; and contributed puzzles to several charity packs and to xword tournament Lollapuzzoola. Meanwhile, I was eating a popsicle. We gab about the wonders of the crossword community, the beauty of indie publishing, and Important Topix such as:

• Lexical gatekeeping
• The dangers of specialization
• Constructor credit as a commodity
• Crosswords vs. Scrabble
• Sizeism (in puzzles, ahem)
• Cryptics in India, Britain, and the US

SUPPORT Crossnerds ON PATREON!

Then visit some of the indie sites word-upped in this episode:

• Themelesses: Bryan Thomas on Puzzles That Need A Home
• Clues to make you smile: Amanda Rafkin's Brain Candy
• Freshest fill: Adam Nicolle, luckystreak xwords
• Puzzles by Crossword Jesus: A-Frame Games
• Brain-benders: Stella Zawistowski's Tough As Nails
• Liz Gorski's Crossword Nation
• Brendan Emmett Quigley
• Happy Little Puzzles by Matthew Stock
• Paolo Pasco's Grids These Days
• Master puzzle newsletter by Matt Gritzmacher