I thought it might be fun to see what Dopers thought about the crossword puzzle I made. It conforms to New York Times puzzle rules, and I’m told it’s about a Tuesday or Wednesday difficulty. Nothing’s written in stone yet though, so feel free to give me feedback or comments on it!
I should also note that I have registered the grid with the copyright office and all that legal stuff. So don’t steal it. But have fun with it and please let me know what you think!
Angelfire?!
I thought that went the way of Geocities.
Anyway, “registered the grid with the copyright office” - that mean you’re going to sell the Xword?
I just kept my Angelfire space from a long time ago for reasons such as this… it’s nice to be able to publish things to the web with no hassle, like large video or sound files.
I’m planning on submitting the crossword to newspapers, yes. I don’t know if it’s good enough to be published, but it certainly won’t hurt to try.
Not bad, not bad at all. I enjoyed it.
I did have one question, though, which I will put in a spoiler box for the sake of anyone who hasn’t done the puzzle yet.What’s the point of the “OLD” in “OLD MELONS”? Is there a meaning to it, or is it just there to make the phrase fit the puzzle? If the former, I didn’t see the logic, and it was enough to keep me from getting 5-Down without Googling. If the latter, it may be enough of a kludge to make the puzzle flawed enough to keep it from being published.Also, my impression is that it’s out of fashion for a crossword to have so many “fill in the blank” type clues, but I could be wrong. Maybe twickster will give her professional opinion.
I liked it! Challenging, but not frustrating. Thanks for sharing! 
Thanks Thudlow and Chanteuse, I’m glad you enjoyed it! I see your point about the partials, but to my knowledge it’s okay as long as the answers are 5 letters or less. But I may be able to go back and get rid of some of them, so thanks for the suggestion!
Also, I think the “old” works because old people are less likely to elope than young people, that’s all. Maybe I’m stretching it, but it makes sense to me…
Fill-in-the-blanks are cheesy; avoid if you can.
I’ll be honest with you, though, I’m not gonna solve it, so I’m not sure what’s being discussed in the spoiler box. If you’d like my take on it, put both the clue and the answer in a spoiler box.
Fun, thanks for sharing! I’ll admit I double-checked a couple answers with Google and cheated to fill in one or two gaps. 
I’ll concur that the answer on 20-across is a bit iffy.
I and my wife did your puzzle. My wife does the NYtimes puzzle and is fairly good at it. First, for the theme answer (I’ll spoiler the question and answer for twickster):
Start of a first grade riddle: why do old melons
End of the riddle: have big weddings
Answer to the riddle: They cantaloupe
I agree the old makes no sense. Young melons cantaloupe also. Actually, I missed this answer because I had “why do all melons”, which makes more sense. I’d recommend reworking to use “all”
In general, my wife didn’t like it, because many of the clues and answers didn’t really fit together. “Iffy” was the word she used. She felt one or two iffy ones was OK, but not this many. For me, I found a few clues were overly wordy. I’ll spoiler the Qs and As of the iffy and wordy ones:
Consume: useup (consume means use, not use up)
Go along with: second (second means supporting, not just going along with)
character development: arc (you could have a character arc, but arc alone refers more to the plot)
enchanted story: tale (tale just means story)
patch up: sew (not the same thing)
Job seekers aids: degrees (calling degrees “job seeking aids” doesn’t really make sense)
Lead in the direction of: guide to (“guide to” implies completion, but “in the direction of” implies not)
Last minute shuttle launch decision-makers: aborters (never heard them called this. Wordy clue)
Recommending with “for”: vouching (not really the same)
Scrawny: lean (not really the same)
Some wordy clues. When it was easy to see what to cut, I put the extra part in italics:
Herman who had a big adventure on the big screen
Colossal chicken processor and marketer
Nature Conservancy, Arts in Public Schools, etc.
There were some other iffy ones, but dinner’s on the table.
First spoiler box: yes, make that change.
Second spoiler box: your wife’s critiques are good. Do a sentence substitution to see whether your clue is the equivalent of your answer or not – parts of speech, verb tenses, need for prepositions, nuances of meaning, etc.