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I've only ever seen the "no unkeyed letter" format in children's puzzles here in Zild. Both cryptic and non-cryptic crosswords routinely use the pattern shown in the example under discussion.



Here in USnainia you're more likely to see children's puzzles as unkeyed.

It's certainly easier to compose an unkeyed puzzle than a keyed one but the ambiguity is in the clues. And example of one that is fairly common is:

Nice season

They will also play with words that could be either a verb or a noun. The New York Times puzzles have themes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday*. Friday puzzles are just plain hard and Saturday puzzles tend to have longer words. Sunday puzzles are larger (23x23 as opposed to the daily 15x15) and also have themes. The Wednesday and Thursday puzzles will sometimes have a further trick, e.g., using an & for the character string 'and'. This can lead to the solvers muttering that they know the answer but it's two letters too long for the space given until the light comes on.

*Maybe on Monday, too, we wouldn't know. It's way too simple† to waste time on.

†OK, Tuesday's is way too simple, too, but sometimes we try to get just the theme words.