Matt

I too did not get the significance of the placement of the circled letters relative to the answers until reading the commentary. And I’m still looking for a quip. Thematically, this one is a fail for me, and that’s a rarity.

It took me a while to fully get it, but once I did I very much enjoyed it. Great Sunday puzzle!

I very much enjoyed this puzzle. I think the shaded squares were an important indicator that something was up with those squares. Otherwise I would have been struggling to enter something sensible as an answer to 17 across. As it was, I suspended judgement until I got enough down answers to see that it spelled EGRET and then I was off to races.