SINGAPORE – This week’s ST×NLB Crossword was constructed by ST Features Correspondent Grace Yeoh, who is part of a team of 40 volunteers from both organisations. Here’s her message to solvers:

These crosswords always teach me something about Singapore, but I learnt something about myself too: I adore choosing words whose clues can point to a standard meaning or a Singaporeanism. Isn’t it lovely that, despite our differences, we’re bound by shared memory?

Especially in the world of TODAY (18D), the notion of the INNOVATOR (8A)—[One who introduces new ideas]—is often seen as adjacent to, if not synonymous with, that of the technological visionary. When you hear the term, perhaps the first IMAGE (16D) that comes to mind is Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs, introducing the world to some revolutionary new device.

As a humble crossword constructor, editor, and occasional columnist, I tinker more with grammar than gadgetry; my inventiveness is limited to punnery, and my devices are only literary. Still, I’d like to think that the work of wordplay is also a kind of innovation, even if its effects are somewhat subtler than those emerging from Silicon Valley.

Thankfully for aspiring innovators like me, this week’s grid offers plenty of food for thought about how to get started, and proves that not all innovation has to be technological.

Lesson one: Don’t be a COPYCAT (13D). As the popular schoolyard rhyme goes: “Copycat, kiss the rat, go home let your mother slap!”