So this is something that must've changed in either 0.9.2 or 0.9.3.
I keep several wallets around, and change between them by symlinking wallets/default to wallets/$target before starting the gui.
Presently I tried to create a new wallet, so mkdir wallets/newwallet and then ln -s newwallet default
Starting up with the symlink in place leads to the initial lock screen (it's a new wallet, it has no password). This was not an issue previously, as I followed the same procedure in the past to create the wallets I already have.
Moving config.json out of the way does not improve the situation.
Any ideas?