Cynic

@Pax Ahimsa Gethen Well not hard once you solved the revealer, but otherwise was a difficult solve by downs only puzzle as the acrosses made no sense and the down clues tricky. I don’t mind misdirection clues, but ever since Joel became editor, the clues have become vague, lazy and not clever. A typical example that continues to irritate me: snack = Oreo. Yes technically an Oreo can be considered a snack, but so are 100K other food items. I soon expect the clues to devolve into: noun, verb, adverb, etc.

@Geoff Offermann. Yes that’s exactly what happened. Like playing mental chess. At first I thought that was today’s gimmick and that it would fill with something special, when completed.