Clever, fun puzzle today by Larry Shearer where every clue begins with C and there are two C-like shapes in the middle of the grid. It gets an A from me. (Answers.)
It's got to be tough working under constraints like that but even so few of the clues were, if you'll forgive me, clunky. I admire the extra degree of difficulty. This seems to be Mr. Shearer's fourth NYT puzzle, all in the past five months. He previously did this clever Superbowl puzzle and before that, his marvelous debut where pairs of clues with the same grid number share the same clue.
Today's puzzle reminded me of a Patrick Merrell classic from 2005 which you might want to try solving first: Across Lite, or my answers.
