It's true that the words CROSS JOIN aren't used but the end result would be a CROSS JOIN if there weren't criteria to limit it to "only" 36 rows as in a "Triangular Join", which is still a form of CROSS JOIN.  Heh... the term CROSS JOIN is easier to say than something like "Constrained Many-to-Many Join" or some such and is a bit more clear for people who don't understand what a "Triangular Join" is, regardless of the syntax used to get there.

I do agree, however, that a lot of people might go looking for the words "CROSS JOIN" instead of looking for the "implicit" cross join formed by the inner join.