Across
1. Prefix with -pod
5. Santa's Pole
10. Antagonist in Splice
11. Arrogant anime laugh
12. Demonstrated celerity
13. Cartier rival
14. Hokkaido native
15. Utopias
16. Buddy with a hatchet?
18. Tank type
23. The six in Six
27. Creator of the twisty puzzle
28. Hexene in Italy
29. Say ___ (repudiate)
30. Danger noodle's noise
31. JD's bestie on Scrubs
32. Carries
33. Dip ___ in
Down
1. Novel by John Masefield
2. Sparkling option: La ___
3. Lead-tin alloy
4. Extra life, for Mario
5. Gas pump part
6. Meme-inspired greeting
7. McFlurry mix-in, once
8. Thereupon
9. Big strong guy
17. Give a once-over
19. ___-pox, fake illness in A:TLA
20. Food for a grizzly bear
21. Foreword
22. Singer Sam
23. Batman's Adam
24. Kindergarten retort
25. Confer, as control
26. MA motto start
I've been wanting to make a crossword-style puzzle for awhile now, since I've been enjoying the Sunday crossword for many years but haven't yet seen a caching puzzle with a fully-interconnected crossword grid. Well it was a challenge let me tell you! Putting it together was a ton of fun, though I hope you'll have just as much fun solving it :) But once the grid is all filled in, where do you go from there...? That's the real puzzle!
About the cache: this will include a physical challenge as well! From the parking area you'll need to make your way along to a downed tree across the creek - this is where your real journey will begin! Getting across will not be a walk in the park, but it's doable. I believe in you! You can do it! After all, you already did the crossword, now you just need to do the cross-wood ;D Once on the other side, you'll make your way down to gz, and there you'll see that your journey ends as it begun - at the end of a downed tree. Cache is an ammo-can style container which should be sheltered a bit from rain, and will contain thematically appropriate prizes until they are gone! Then once you're all set, all you have to do is get back across :)
Now, can you get to the cache some other way that doesn't involve the terrain challenge? Probably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I understand not everyone is up for that kind of thing, so while taking an alternate path wouldn't be the intended experience... at the end of the day, getting pen to paper is what counts.
Optional: if you want to check that you have all of the crossword fully correct, put all the letters in order into the calculator here: codebeautify.org/checksum-calculator and enter the resulting checksum into the first certitude checker below. Leave the algorithm as MD5, and enter all the letters in all caps without any spaces, top to bottom left to right, which essentially amounts to entering in all the answers to the Across clues in order. For example, if the first 4 Across answers were Hey, How, You, and Doin, then the start of what you'd enter into the calculator would be HEYHOWYOUDOIN.... etc etc for all 84 characters. So you don't have to keep pinging certitude: the correct checksum is 32 characters long, starts with 8d91 and ends with 0ba2. (will it give you a hint toward solving the puzzle? maybe, maybe not... but at least you'll know you have the crossword done). Good luck!
Crossword Checksum
Final Coordinates
Congrats to Albus_Birch on the FTF!