For what its worth I do it the same as you. I feel accomplished when I get it all in one round but that only happens with the easy puzzles at the beginning of the week. I have a goal of completing a puzzle on just the first pass of accross clues without having to use any down clues.

I agree with you, I recently explained it to a group of engineers and techs.

I haven’t read the article but what’s described in the headline is abhorerent. Ironically the technology could be used to identifying times when artists’ identities are being misattributed or stolen. Pretty simple for an artist to define their portfolio then have a bot flag anything it finds with their signature on it that they didn’t create themselves.