puzzle.noob

I’m fairly new here. Is it common for a gimmick to be unannounced? I would have thought the clue to 15D would read — “What a stereotypical bartender asks after a horse walks into a bar (and a clue to solving…)” and then those connected by the theme are highlighted, as I’ve seen in other puzzles. Not this time. I found the this frustratingly not enjoyable at all because I didn’t know I was supposed to be figuring out the trick. And I really don’t think “IMS” is a thing anymore. “Instant message” is what we used to do on AOL twenty five years ago. These days any message in Slack, Instagram, WhatsApp, literally any modern app, is always called “DMS” for direct messages.