Makes sense to me, Manduck.
I love cryptics. My favorite are the ones in The Atlantic.
Been done. I remember one where you had to put in a π fpr “pi” and there have been plenty of others, I’m sure.
The weekly Baltimore free paper, which carried the Dope, had a comics column in which they had a NYT “Oreo Watch.”
I have an omnibus of old style puzzles, inherited from my late mother-in-law. The new ones are far superior, since they eschew the use of obscure words and places for more reasonable answers with clever clues. I despise having to look things up, I’d much rather work at a section until I crack that one answer that breaks it open. I’ve got about a 99% success rate for all NYT puzzles.