My sister wrote the clue for 6-Across. (I am not that clever.)
If you want a hint about the theme, click here: A less subtle title for the puzzle could have been Please Pardon OUR Appearance.
It wasn't until after we finished constructing this one that we discovered the NYTimes ran a similar puzzle a couple of years ago, with two of the same theme entries! I surely did that puzzle back then, but I have no recollection of it whatsoever…
My team recently open-sourced a container runtime project we've been working on. This puzzle is inspired by that project. Here's a link to the GitHub repo. It's hidden because the repo name is a spoiler for the puzzle: https://github.com/awslabs/soci…
If you're over 30, you're going to hate the pop-culture references in the west. If you're not a 1990's sci-fi dork, you're going to hate the gratuitous Star Trek references in the east. So...something for everyone!
It was pointed out to me that Erin Rhode had a similar (and excellent!) puzzle in AVCX last year, which I had completely forgotten about. Ah well. Link to Fiend review.