ANSWERS: Mixed Doubles 2

Before I reveal the answers to my second "Mixed Doubles" puzzle, I just wanted to give you guys a little news update: last Thursday, I received my first check from GAMES Magazine! Yep, it took a while, but I finally got paid for my "Squeezed in the Middle" "Word Sandwiches" puzzles from the December 2015 issue! Now that that's out of the way, here's all the people who solved my puzzle from two weeks ago:

• YYW ****
• Yossi Fendel ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Grant Fikes ***
• Lynn Sweeney ***
• Mom ****
• Debbie Underwood ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• John Davis ****

Now just head below the break for the answers, along with some solver comments!

And here are all the correct number combinations: 

ACROSS: 1/21, 2/18, 3/15, 4/12, 5/19, 6/22, 7/14, 8/9, 9/8, 10/23, 11/20, 12/4, 13/16, 14/7, 15/3, 16/13, 18/2, 19/5, 20/11, 21/1, 22/6, 23/10

DOWN: 1/18, 2/24, 3/11, 4/8, 5/22, 6/17, 7/23, 8/4, 9/26, 10/15, 11/3, 12/27, 13/25, 14/20, 15/10, 16/21, 17/6, 18/1, 20/14, 21/16, 22/5, 23/7, 24/2, 25/13, 26/9, 27/12

The two leftover clues are 17-Across and 19-Down, and the answer to those clues (which you can get by scrambling the letters in the pink squares) is BLACKLIST: this puzzle's FINAL ANSWER!

The fact that James Spader's character on this show is named "Red" Reddington is purely coincidence!

Solver Grant Fikes wanted me to "Give me three stars because I had to look up the final answer. I found the anagram STICKBALL (you can thank Bill Cosby's autobiography Childhood for teaching me about this marvelous sport) and thought, "Well, that's probably a slangy term for 'ostracize' of some kind. There's no way this 9-letter word has an anagram.""

Solver Adam Weaver "wouldn't mind the last clue being unclued to avoid the arithmetic shortcut." [the "shortcut" he was talking about was detailed in the answers to my previous "Mixed Doubles" puzzle]

Solver Tyler Hinman said that he "Don't think the shaded squares are needed, but that's a matter of style."