today's puzzle is from david! david stepped in to make this grid when i was very very behind on 7xwords stuff, everyone say "Thank you, David" in the comments!!

David says: "I was honored to publish Malaika's Universal Crossword debut* on Tuesday, and I'm now honored to be a constructor for her 7xwords project! This grid's open pattern was quite a construction challenge, and I tried a number of seed answers (perhaps most notably ANIMOJI) before I landed on 2-Down. I came very close to cluing 5-Across as [Rafkin who is Universal-ly well-liked], but I decided that was too corny, even for a guy like me who spends all day coming up with dad jokes."

(*ross came up with this brilliant theme and it was very fun to team up with him on the grid. you can solve here. --malaika)