Revenge of the SiXth

Very nicely done ... and a great way to start the week! (I appreciated the "symmetry" hint; it ultimately kept me from falling into that clinch/cinch rabbit hole.) Thank you for sharing your cleverness and artistry yet again!

Well, one typo out of the way and I'm off the couch. Thanks, Darth

Nice one, Darth! Loved the symmetry and double meanings within the clues!

Way to clue them, Darth!

I really enjoyed this one; excellent job of double-cluing!

Nice one Darth! And how appropriate that the destruction of General Grievous led to your rise. Happy Sith Day!

happy revenge of the sixth... welcome to the dark side bwahahaaaa... the L from CLINCH... so evil ... i appreciated both hints otherwise i wouldn't have been able to solve it

Nice one.

Cool idea, and fun answer. Never would have gotten it in a million years without the hint. Tried all variants of manipulating 6 or 10, looking for Xs in clues, etc. Once I knew I was supposed to delete letters I stared for a bit longer, and then eventually saw that the title might be pointing toward 5-letter entries. Pretty tricky to have the two long acrosses clued with Star Wars intel but not be related to the mechanism. The Easter egg / red herring line can be a subtle one. :)

First noticed the double cluing with RIVAL. Guess that Wookie me up. All well thought out and executed (as usual). Thanks, Darth!

Good stuff.

Very nice!

A new CrossHAIR classic! Thought about ACRID / ACID when I was filling the grid…wow, 8 of those! Bravo on the symmetrical structure and cluing!

Your clues were tremendous! I know how tough it is to write clues that are broad enough to apply to another entry, but you took it to another level!

Lucked out noticing the RIVAL RIAL double solution for that clue. Appreciate your sticking to symmetry and away I went.

Wow - very clever idea and construction!

Took me a long time. Usually I think when I see these things that that can't be it. But this was consistant and worked.

I suppose to tomorrow I realize all the clever things that make this stronger and more amazing but for now I'm just glad I good it.

After focusing on what looked like theme answers, I went back to staring at the title and inspiration hit. Then I saw the second layer (though I still can't make sense of 28A). Very nice!

This is a brilliant grid and meta. Simply brilliant. Thank you so much!

BEAUTIFULLY hidden. I had the right idea but not the commitment to it because I could not see the "link". It was finally the Alaskan REEDS that did it. I kept coming back to that because it was so odd because I would not think reeds do particularly well in cold Alaskan waters. Finally it hit me that REDS would and then the currency one hit me in the head. I do have to say I almost tried to make it one step more difficult by going HATE = DETEST CASE =HELP DESK OFFERING, DEFY = INFURIATE but I was grasping there so I just took the first letters to spell one of the most evil of SW characters. I spent a lot of time on Ferrari because having Kylo Ren in a SW puzzle was just too much of an enticement. I also spent a lot of time ar crossings (X) of applicable words. THe X in the title and CROSSHAIRS led me that way.

All in all a delightful puzzle.

Saw the double answer possibility with ACRID and ACID right away, but never thought about it again and pursued (unsuccessfully) how I could make more big Xs in the grid. Took me too long to come back to the right path. Thanks for the fun puzzle!

Took me long enough! Needed the last nudge! I kept looking at the center of the big X and taking letters all around it! Thanks for the puzzle, Darth! It was very nice!

Whoa, very cool.

I needed the "straightforward" nudge after trying too hard and too impossibly to get SW-related entries to cross. Once I had that, it only took a sec (but not the par type as I've learned.) Now echoing praise for this fabulous puzzle too! Thanks, Darth!