Whoa, Bob, kudos on doing the NY Sun. Times X-word! Wow!
I'm sorry you don't like cryptics--I love them!
Possibly because they're still kind of new to me--frankly, I'd gotten tired of plain old crossword puzzles, though I might not have if I'd tried the NY ones. But cryptics can have such great word plays in them! I really wish I could find more of them. Even our best bookstores seldom have books of just cryptics--I usually have to find them mingled in with other kinds of word puzzles.