Crossword connoisseurs may notice that this grid is rather oddly shaped. That’s because the theme entries are a combination of lengths that no sane constructor would put into a puzzle. Luckily, sanity is not a requirement for this particular vocation, so we applied a shoehorn and some grease, sat on the words to compress them a bit, and finally got them all into the grid. The result, oddly enough, makes for a somewhat easier puzzle than usual because the important entries couldn’t be squeezed in without dividing up the rest of the squares to make shorter-than-normal entries. Don’t let that discourage you, though. We’ve still got a pretty lively fill, with some uncommon words and phrases, some annoyingly misleading clues, and a bit of general sadism thrown in for the fun of it. Happy solving!
Title: Contract Negotiations
Difficulty: Wednesday
Download: Across Lite or printable PNG (w/ solution)