Easy Peasy (with David Ritterskamp)

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Today's collab puzzle is with my *other* new xw friend David Ritterskamp. Please read his comments below the solve. We hashed out various strategies to make this work, he developed a starter grid and we went from there. This was a fun challenge because (redacted, read below the puz) and (redacted, read below the puz). 

It's a tiny, little bit different, unusual. If it feels a little strange, just keep swimming. Enjoy, have fun!

In other xw news, please check out this crowdsourced mega-collab hosted by Chris and led by Brooke and Ada. 
In other xw news, please check out this crowdsourced mega-collab (to-be) hosted by Rachel and Claire.

If you solve it, stream it, like it, love it, or find a typo, let me know! twitter | email

[PDF] [.puz] [solution] 

-----------------------spoilers below-----------------------

From David: I had this idea floating around for a bit and after a couple starts and stops with it I wasn't making much progress. Norah was open to working with me on it and the next thing I knew, it was not only off the ground but better than I could have done alone. Working with Norah is everything a good collab should be - both productive and delightful. I feel I'm a better constructor from the experience and I hope it shows! 

From Norah: I 100% agree. Working with David was tons of fun and I learned a lot. (spoiler time): This was the rare construction that got more difficult the closer we got to being finished. The challenge here is that this puz is like dominos - one change affects everything else. Every time we changed a clue pairing, something else had to give. I spent a lot of time googling pairs of words to find real things - that's when the Stenocactus blessed us! We had to come up with multiple clues for many of the entries until everything finally fell into place.  All in all, this was a great collab and I'd be happy to work with David again anytime.