themeless 20, difficult women, with brooke

Shoutout to Brooke for sticking with me through this puzzle, which we started working on in **August of 2021**. Phew!! This is what it’s like to collab with me, y’all. But I am so pleased with the end result, particularly with the spanners’ clues and how fun we made the eight-stacks. I think this puzzle is hard, but not very hard. Idk– you tell me.

Brooke says: “The spanner I contributed to this puzzle was inspired by witnessing Malaika pretending to be a stereotype of a software engineer, and I’m so glad it’s out in the world. I love our collective cluing voice and hope you do too!”

Thanks to Rafa for the test solve!