Beneath The Surface

PDF puz Online Solution I had to make a couple last-minute revisions to one of the marquee clues in this puzzle, first because its wordplay duped a grid entry (this probably isn't a puzzle killer, but I found it inelegant), and then because I accidentally slipped in an indirect anagram (which is  a no-no for many cryptic constructors, at least if you're striving to play fair with solvers). Suffice it to say there were lots of files to re-export and links to reset, but anyway, it's all here now with a couple hours to spare. I kind of like the layout here, a 28-word grid with all but two entries of length 6 or more. Hope you enjoy it!

I felt like practicing Printer's Devilry clue-writing so I made another 'impish' mini. This one is 6x6 with bars instead of blocks. Now, it turns out that Across Lite doesn't support barred crosswords (?), but PuzzleMe does. A quick tutorial in HTML editing and voila! You're welcome, computer solvers (but if you like paper solving, there's still a PDF). In my  first PD , all of the clues were examples of what could be called 'first-order' devilry, where removal of the hidden word from the clue passage only creates one new word (by joining the remaining ends of the original undevilled words). This puzzle contains several examples of higher-order devilry where the removal's effects extend beyond the resection point, such as 2A, 5A, and 4D. When making sense of these clues, the important thing to remember is that the original order of letters in the clue is unaltered .  Entries in this grid include one proper noun. Incidentally, the proper noun entry (n...