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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
 |
| [DEATH STAR (1A)] |
Theme answers:
- DEATH STARE / ESPOUSE (1A: More than just a disapproving look / 14D: Champion, as a cause)
- NAPE / NASCENT (10A: Scruff of the neck / 15D: Budding)
- EQUIPPED / ESTAB. (21A: Outfitted / 26D: Sign abbr. meaning "founded in")
- ROLE / RAMBLED (36A: Part in a play / 40D: Didn't stay on topic)
- SWAN SONG / THING (49A: Last hurrah / 34D: Unnamed article)
- DENY / UNREADY (63A: Not admit / 39D: Ill-prepared)
Puri (also poori, IPA: [puːɾiː]) is a type of deep-fried flatbread, with an unleavened wheat dough. Puri originated from the northern Indian subcontinent, where it is one of the most common flatbreads; it is a staple food in parts of the subcontinent. It resembles chapati but is deep-fried. Similar deep-fried breads from the region include bhatura, luchi, and kachori.Puri is made of wheat flour, typically atta, which forms a dough with oil and water. This is rolled into circles that inflate while deep-frying. Due to the cooking method, puri is high in fat and calories. Puris are commonly served as a breakfast or snack, typically paired with other foods. It may be paired with savory foods, such as potato or chickpea curry, or with sweets. Variants of puri may use different types of flour or add puréed vegetables to the dough. Other variants are stuffed. Small, spherical puris are used for panipuri and sev puri, while flat puris are used for papri chaat and bhel puri; these dishes are classified as chaat.
Foods resembling puri may have existed in ancient India, and recipes were recorded by the fifteenth century. Puri is often served on holidays and other events. It is also served as in Hindu prayer as prasadam, offerings to deities. (wikipedia)
_with_Maida_Poori_(_Deep_Fried_Puffy_Bread).jpg)
• • •
I think the stack in the NW is probably the nicest part of the puzzle. DEATH STAR(E) is a great themer, and over ENCHILADAS and IDLE GOSSIP, you've really got something there. After that, things kind of descend into blah. I've never heard the term "The Devil's radio" before. I've heard "IDLE hands are the Devil's plaything” [sorry, apparently I’ve misremembered the quote—it’s “workshop” and not “plaything”]. But I didn't know the Devil had a radio as well as a plaything [or “workshop”]. Even after I got IDLE here, GOSSIP didn't leap out at me. I think I'd say "IDLE CHATTER" before "IDLE GOSSIP" ("chatter" googles about twice as well, though "gossip" is completely legit). I needed crosses to remember NISAN and NAMIB, and I totally forgot POORI (despite the fact that it was "Word of the Day" just two years ago). This is just the second appearance of POORI. Weirdly, there has been just one appearance of PURI (which wikipedia has as the primary spelling), fifty years ago, and that wasn't clued as a flatbread, but rather as an [Indian pilgrimage center]). I say "weirdly" because I'd expect the four-letter spelling of a word to take off in the crossword before the five-letter spelling. Maybe POORI is the dominant English-language menu spelling? I don't know. I do know that thinking about POORI is making me hungry, so I'm gonna wrap this up now so I can go make the coffee and then eat.
Bullets:
- 13A: Fondita offerings (ENCHILADAS) — weird: when I typed [define fondita] into my search engine (Duck Duck Go) just now, the third hit was a site with today's NYT crossword answers. The first hit is an Italian-English dictionary. Either "fondita" is not a widely used term or search engines really, truly have become useless. Actually, it seems "fondita" is a diminutive form of "fonda," "a tavern, inn, or small restaurant." For Spanish speakers, "fondita" is undoubtedly a common term. I've never seen it before.
- 43A: Desert for which an African country is named (NAMIB) — that country: Chad. Jk, it's NAMIBia. five-letter desert starting with "N," my brain defaults to NEGEV. Sadly, getting the "B" today did not help, as NEGEB is an acceptable alt spelling of NEGEV, which I know only from doing crossword puzzles for over three decades (12 lifetime NYTXW appearances, though none since '08). Thanks, crosswords! Experience has its drawbacks. I really should've remembered that the NEGEV / NEGEB is in the Middle East, not Africa. The "for which an African country is named" ultimately helped me sort things out.
- 28D: Coffee or tea specification (ICED) — not for me. Well, rarely for me. Mostly I can't stand ice in my drink, any drink, unless it's in my cocktail in giant cube form. Ice is too cold and it dilutes and takes up space where actual tasty beverage should be. Sometimes I really want an iced coffee, though, but always "light ice" ... and then they show me the cup with the ice in it and I'm like "... lighter." I like cold drinks cold (esp. my cocktails), I just don't like ice to be physically present.
- 20D: Org. with a list of popular baby names (SSA) — my mom was a lawyer for the SSA, but that did not help me here. I think of "social security" in relation to old people, not babies. I wanted AKC here briefly. Puppies are babies!
[Matilda is the purest chocolate lab you'll ever see (1:59)]
That's all for today. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Similar to Rex - I liked the trick - makes it fun to play but the overall product is quite flat. The hidden letter game fell completely with NAPE x NASCENT.
ReplyDeleteDown By The Water
The big guy summarizes the fill nicely - it’s weak at best. I like IDLE GOSSIP, SLOOPS and SCARAB. The grid constraints to add the extra black create all that short stuff - a lot of it is sticky. The editor was UNREADY to polish this one up.
Bryan Ferry
Fun Thursday morning to figure out initially but nothing behind the curtain.
Swan Upon LEDA
ReplyDeleteEasy-Medium. Something of a slog. Got the "missing letter" idea quickly, never realized what the randomly-placed missing letters spelled until after the solve, when it was spelled out. I was too lazy to check after I got the revealer ("Oh, so that must be what they spell.") Extra credit, though, because all the theme answers spell valid words without the hidden letters.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
My 58D long stretch was an Eon before it was an ERA.
The unnamed article at 34D was THIs before it was THIN[G]. That made MOLTEN (45A) difficult to see.
Ban before DEN[Y] for not admit at 63A, fixed quickly by CREPE (63A).
I need to brush up on my Greek mythology. I had hErA for Helen of Troy's mother instead of LEDA (54A).
WOEs:
Erykah BADU (38A), who apparently sang about Tyrone.
Gospel musician TYE Tribbett at 60D.
Quickly worked crosses and downs, figured out the extra hidden letter ruse quickly so when I got to DARK at 62A, confidently completed DARKMATTER, finished up the rest of the puzzle but something was clearly amiss in the SW. Took a minute to write out the hidden letters and AAH, ENERGY. Undid my mistake and done. And so necessarily to the google I went and got a great lesson on the difference between dark matter and dark energy. It’s always a great start to the day when I learn something before 6 AM.
ReplyDeleteSee, I also dropped in DARKMATTER, then when I realized the letters were energy, assumed it was some sort of Energy = Matter (times c^2) thing. Finally I changed it when everything else just didn’t work.
DeleteGot the trick on the first pass, went down to the revealer and threw in Blackholes, which fit! Then switched to dark matter, finally got the energy. Had to rework a lot but liked it
DeleteToday’s puzzle did something to me.
ReplyDeleteI opened the grid expecting a straightforward encounter. DEATH STARE. ENCHILADAS. A-ROD. I thought I knew what I was dealing with. I was wrong.
Then came IDLE GOSSIP—“The Devil’s radio”—and I felt the first flicker of danger. The puzzle was hiding something. I could sense it. Every clue seemed to lean closer, whispering just enough to make me want more.
And then I saw it.
DARK ENERGY.
Six letters. Hidden in the darkness.
I stared at the grid. The grid stared back.
It was clever. It was elegant. It was almost indecently satisfying. The black squares weren't merely sitting there, silent and inert. They were concealing something. Something powerful. Something cosmic. Something that, according to the puzzle, accounts for most of the universe.
I should have been annoyed. Instead, I was fascinated.
NO SCORE. HOT. A TAD. CAN'T I. Every answer seemed to offer another little tease, another glimpse of what was happening beneath the surface. The clues knew exactly how much to reveal—and, more importantly, how much to withhold.
By the time I reached EPIC DEFEAT, I was no longer solving the puzzle.
The puzzle was solving me.
And when I finally understood DARK ENERGY, I had to sit back and breathe.
Some puzzles are merely clever.
This one knew exactly where to touch.
@Trevor, the puzzle was nowhere near as captivating for us. But your account was worth the price of admission!!
Deleteyes thank you
DeleteInstead of idle gossip [16A], I had ouijaboard. My grandmother refused to allow any of us to use one because she saw it as the Devil's telephone.
DeleteRex nails it again. A clever idea, bogged down by lifeless three-letter fill. If there was much energy in this puzzle, 70% of it was invisible to me.
ReplyDelete“Devil’s Radio” is a song by George Harrison.
ReplyDeleteI was scrolling down to make the same comment. It's a GREAT song that I couldn't find a free link to online, but here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Radio. It's worth paying for if you can find it. We miss you, George!
DeleteI mostly just find these kinds of puzzles tedious because I solve in the app and so I have to remember which black squares have which letters - maybe they work better in print…
ReplyDeleteI guess it'd work in print if you solve in white gel pen...
DeleteThat is to say, I imagine most solvers have to remember which squares are hiding letters, regardless of medium.
Solving with the app on my iPad, I take screen shots and then mark up the photo with whatever is missing. It's a little cumbersome but today it allowed me to keep track of the letters and see ENERGY in the dark squares.
DeleteIn print works if you print the Ink Saver version and use a dark pen.
DeleteI enjoyed this more than OFL did.... I'd rate it a solid 3.75 stars. My first 2 blacked out squares were the 2 "E"s, so I thought I was looking for silent Es, or blacked out Es.... took me a while to figure out we were spelling a word. The next one I found was the R. Weird before WACKO slowed me down; had nAP before APE--since I thought we were just getting rid of silent Es, and NAP is a perfectly good word. I will never learn the NYC rail and subway ABBRs.... Had IRR before IRT. Terrific puzzle, the DEATHSTAR is definitely a good place to find DARK ENERGY. See also EPIC DEFEAT and IDLE GOSSIP. Thanks, Damon, for coming up with a new Thursday theme that was worthy of the day!!!! : )
ReplyDeleteJust remember Interborough Rapid Transit.
Delete@ jberg
Deletebut also IND and BMT so unless you have R in the middle can't be positive...
Oh yeah, it's LIRR, right? That's what I was thinking of
DeleteMaybe the editors should have swapped Wednesday and Thursday this week. Yesterday was considerably more difficult and also had a more evolved theme. From a fill point of view the puzzle today required virtually no energy of any sort, dark or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI got the trick, but thought "E-N-E-R-G-Y" was hidden inside six rebuses. So I got a DNF for not knowing six black squares weren't really black this one time. I've quit doing Sunday puzzles...maybe it's time for a second day off.
ReplyDeleteSame here. I used a rebus and went back this morning and tried to put a y into a black box. App wouldn’t let me do it. What’s up with the app people? This is not the first time I got stuck because the app wouldn’t let me do it. I’m on an iPad if that makes any difference.
DeleteThe app is smarter than NYT's editors. A black square is like a red light to a driver...STOP! All of a sudden we're asked to superimpose letters on them? And this is clever?
DeleteI kind of liked this. I like IDLEGOSSIP, which I think is a very familiar phrase, although I hadn’t heard it refered to as “the devil’s radio” before.
ReplyDeleteThe missing letters trick was easy to get, but I didn’t bother to try and figure out what they spelled untill I finished and the app showed them to me. I had some trouble in the SE because I had Weird before WACKO, which made the long acrosses hard to figure out. I haven’t heard of DARKENERGY (it was no help as a revealer as it was almost the last thing I filled in) and EPICDEFEAT isn’t a familiar term. I also have only really heard EPICfail or failure said. Had Eon before ERA too.
I’ve forgotten most of what I learned when I went through my DARK MATTER / DARK ENERGY phase a few years ago. You don’t have to go far down the rabbit hole before the whole topic gets really mind boggling. Anyway, it made for an interesting attempt at a theme construct - I’m not sure how well it landed, but an interesting attempt to make it work.
ReplyDeleteI started to lose interest after a while as I kept bumping into things like NISAN, NAMIB, BADU, SUPRAS, and SCARAB. I agree with Rex - the puzzle did seem a little lifeless for one centered around the concept of hidden energy.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteNice. I made a "letters in Blockers" puz once, but there wasn't a coherent tying-it-together-to-form-a-word element like this one. It was a Sunday puz, 21x21, which did have a Theme, but the blacked out letters didn't spell anything. I'd have to search through the ole files to try to find it.
Liked this one. Was slightly disappointed that not all the Cheater Squares were hidden letters, but that abated once I saw that Damon needed just ENERGY to be spelled out. When the first four Cheaters were hidden letters, naturally I just assumed all the rest would be. But you know what they say about assume ...
Tough to construct, as not only do you need words that contain the correct letters, in order, but Damon made the resulting words real things! Could've been non-words, but they all are legit. Bravo, sir.
Different kind of ThursPuz, thanks for that.
Hope y'all have a great Thursday!
One F
(The SB has featured the F as Center Letter twice this week! Makes up for lack of F's in this week's puzs.)
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Roo, interesting take, based on your experience.
DeleteWhen we figured out the black square THING, we assumed (uh-oh) that the sixth black square (the clue said there were six) was adjacent to AMBLED and STONEWARE. That made no sense, but if you look at the placement of the letters E-N-E-G-Y, the sixth one should be where we assumed, for symmetry. That really held us up, since we only later saw ENERGY (we had DARK matter for quite a while).
Came here thinking two stars, based on more that A TAD of bad fill. But in hindsight, if we had truly solved the theme, the SE corner (our trouble spot) would have been easier.
I kind of liked the trick, not sure I've seen that one before, or at least it's been awhile. I did take exception to one answer, SOLID - as a 'sphere' by definition is hollow. -- https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/68235/definition-of-a-sphere
ReplyDeleteDoes that "hollowness" apply to a cube, to a pyramid, a cone, a football (an oblate sphreroid)? I'm gonna look into it when I'm done with Rex et. al.
DeleteA sphere in math/physics is hollow as only the outside is defined by the function. A sphere is a set of points equidistant from a single point. A football shape, which I just learned is called a prolate spheroid, would also would be hollow as would a torus (donut shape). I think the other shapes you mention would be too messy and noncontinuos to have well defined standard definitions
DeleteThought DEATHSTAR(E) was a great opening, AGR/TYE a not-so-great closing. In between was kinda fun given that the gimmick fell with the opening answer. Having so many disguised real words was a good job. In recent puzzles have seen ERA defined as a long time. While this may be technically true, a purely long time is more an EON, while an ERA is generally defined by some theme rather than its longevity.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree on era vs eon, e.g. Edwardian era was only 9 years long whereas all of Earth's history is only 4 eons
DeleteAfter Damon’s fun and clever puzzle, I inexplicably made a list of the dozen un-clued answers, took it as a challenge to place them in an ode, and here it is:
ReplyDeleteOde To Mr. Swanson
THIN Mrs. SWANSON
With a DEATH STARE, but otherwise
A face UNREAD
QUIPPED
“My strong as an APE but
Normally taciturn SPOUSE, after Spain’s world Cup victory
AMBLED in ASCENT up our rock-climb wall to the roof
Took a STAB, and
Amid our lovely quiet neighborhood, shrieked ‘OLE!’ again and again into the night
I may never leave the DEN”
On top of everything else, you're a profound and moving poet.
Delete@egs -- Hah!
DeleteGreat theme. Thought it was tougher than Rex did, but that may be because a couple of guesses turned out wrong. Up top, I had 1A and guessed that we were just dropping Es for some reason, so 10A was NAP rather than APE. That got sorted pretty quickly. The other mistaken guess was DARK MATTER rather than ENERGY, mostly because I can’t be bothered to keep track of missing letters while I solve. That one hung around a while and slowed down the finish.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I wonder how many of us fell into the nAP before APE trap....
DeleteBrilliant idea. Like Rex, I figured out the hidden letter in the black squares early, but unlike Rex, I whooshed down to the bottom SE and- in spite of the huge clue that maybe, just maybe I should jot down those hidden letters- I plopped in DARKmatter. And I had WACKy instead of WACKO. THAT screwed me up enough to throw in the towel and search Tribbet since I know zero about gospel singers. (Unlike Erykah BADU who I love) Ah well. It was still a fun solve and I forgive the short solve (except for AGR…).
ReplyDeleteHaha…Rex I think you are OLD enough to NOT have had an SSN assigned at birth, but your daughter surely did as both of my children did. At any rate, even though I AM old (dammit!) I figured out SSA pretty quick.
I look forward to hearing other comments and I’m glad Rex gave Damon an extra half star!
“Idle Gossip” was a great Sarah Vaughn recording.
ReplyDeleteI'm not familiar with dark energy as a cosmological phenomenon but I have heard it used to describe the vibe from scary person, such as someone you met at a party or had a bad blind date with.
ReplyDeleteI came here wondering if Rex would count DEATH STARE as a Star Wars reference, which he did. Fair enough, but I would have gone with the clued version and given it a pass.
ReplyDeleteMy son lived in Namibia for 2 years, so I had an unfair advantage with that desert. Interesting place (but what isn't?)
I've learned about Ms. BADU mainly from puzzles; but if they ever ask for her first name I'll be lost.
Like many, I started out looking for a rebus, since 10-A had to be NAPE. But then the next one I got was E, then another E and a Y. I was going to get them all and then see what they spelled, but the puzzle did that for me before I even had the G. Fortunately, the Y was enough to rule out "matter."
I don't really know my Hebrew months, and I thought the DEA probably has some LABS of its own. But I went with DNA, figuring I knew what to fix if something was amiss. So I put in the last letter with a sense of anticipation. No happy music! But OTOH, all the hidden letters appeared in the grid--and then I got the music about 5 seconds later. Maybe it was something about my connection.
Bad, bad, BAD fill in this puzzle. The theme was fine but wasy to figure out immediately.
ReplyDeleteMedium until the SE corner COMPLETELY confused me. I had DARKMATTER and couldn’t make the crosses work. Didn’t know the gospel singer so that whole corner turned into an utter slog. Lots of ambiguous cluing (ERA vs EON, AGR vs INT, WACKO vs WEIRD/WONKY). An impossible corner in an otherwise typical Thursday.
ReplyDeleteMuch easier than yesterday’s puzzle, and both have a Thursday-like twist, so why were they flipped?
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love that we have a puzzle based on dark energy. It’s incredibly niche, but it’s my niche.
I wonder which country Rex thought was named for the Negev/Negeb?
I feel like DARKmatter is what it's really called but it took only one cross to see that wasn't going to work. Basically caught the black square thing at DEATHSTAR(E) but didn't work out that the black square letters were ENERGY.
ReplyDeleteOk puzzle, not as tricky as expected for Thurs?
“IDLE hands are the devil’s workshop” is the quote from Proverbs. “Devil’s plaything” makes me think of Saddam Hussein in that South Park movie.
ReplyDeleteSUPRAS made my eye twitch. Toyota Supras are currently for say, (model year 26) although this is the last year for this generation of the model. So "bygone" is like... um?
ReplyDeleteThe Supra was out of production from 2003 to 2018, but has been back in production for the past seven years. So it could have been called "bygone" up until 2019, but no longer.
DeleteWikipedia: "The initial four generations of the Supra were produced from 1978 to 2002. The fifth generation has been produced since March 2019 and later went on sale in May 2019."
Yeah that clue is wrong. Though they did stop making them for a few years. Celica is the answer to that clue as they stopped making those 20ish years ago.
DeleteShouldn't 70% of the puzzle have been dark? Now that would have been fun!
ReplyDeleteI love HIGHPAY as an attractive feature of a job. Right up there with a free gym membership and 3 paid sick days.
I noticed that the first 3 dark ENERGY squares (E,N,E) were also cheater squares (this was long before I realized that what was being spelled out in the dark squares). So I figured that maybe every cheater square had a letter and the theme was something to do with cheating in the dark (best place to do it, IMHO). I like the DARKENERGY of this puzzle. 4 out of 4 good puzzles this week. I'm lovin' it. Thanks, Damon Gulczynski.
Well I'm with the minority (?) that really liked this one. Saw the missing letters almost right away APE or NAP slowed things down, and the missing E from EQUIPPED made me think we were looking for E's, so a nice aha! when I found out we weren't. WEIRD before WACKO was eventually fixed and led to the revealer, after which I went back to see if the missing letters did indeed spell ENERGY, which they did, and I was a happy man.
ReplyDeleteNames again--today they were BADU and TYE, hello to you both. I may have met you in previous crosswords, excuse my poor memory. I may have seen POORI before but I'm pretty sure NAMIB was a first, nice to learn something.
Thought this was an ingenious Thursday, DG. The fill Didn't Give me as many problems as some others, as I thought the end product was well worth it. Thanks for all the fun.
Ehh. I also figured out the trick pretty early. It felt like a Monday with a couple of squares blacked out. I would have appreciated the mechanic if it was more interestingly deployed.
ReplyDeleteSupras are not “former” models. They were discontinued for a while but are currently in production.
ReplyDeleteAmen!!! Though 2026 will be the final year of production.
DeleteDamon likes to play around with words. For instance, in his last puzzle, about a year ago, the theme was SPEECH TO TEXT, where the clues had the kind of errors that we often see in computer translations. My favorite was the clue for EIFFEL TOWER – [Rod-shaped parasite] – where “Paris site” was misheard.
ReplyDeleteToday he played around with letters in the black squares, even having them spell something. Also highly creative was his clue for ADV – [Wholly, but not holey or holy, e.g.: Abbr.].
ADV or ADVERB is almost always clued directly, such as [Adj. modifier], or by giving adverb examples, such as [Now or never]. But Damon’s clue today takes it to a level not seen before in any of the major crossword venues, involving rhyme and contrast. Brilliant out-of-the-box thinking, and it made a dull answer special.
Bravo on the above, Damon. It was fun to untangle your excellently executed theme, and afterward, to learn post-solve about dark energy. Thank you for this!
@Lewis, thanks for the education re ADV (which we never understood, even after finishing the puzzle).
DeleteWe were looking for a synonym for wholly, not its part of speech. Had ENT(ire), ALL (nope, not an abbr), AGG(regate) before ADV fell via the crosses.
Agree that it's a novel way to clue a rather mundane piece of fill. Thanks!!
I recall a puzzle like this some years ago. I’m surprised that a lot of people didn’t care for it that much. I thought it was terrific.🎈🎈🎊🎊
ReplyDeleteDNF. Decent concept but way too much garbage to be anything but an unpleasant slog. The constructor tried to get cute with tired abbreviations which was equally unpleasant.
ReplyDeleteThe "DARK" letters spell "ENERGY."
ReplyDeleteTrump does today's NYTXW:
ReplyDelete1D, DEI. Deleted
55A, EPIC DEFEAT. Denied
23D, IRS. Evaded.
When arguing a point it's good to QUOTA respected authority.
PR biggie: ADDON
Woe is me: POORI
There are six black blobs, each with five squares. I figured that there would be one dark letter in each. But no. It was 2,1,1,0,1,1.
ReplyDeleteHappy to be with Damon G. He seldom disappoints.
19A. Double meaning for "pointless." If there are no points, there is no score.
I enjoyed this, though I agree with those pointing out the bad fill, and it was worse for me as a newer solver since some of what stumped me was listed as crosswordese. But I tend to enjoy a Thursday with a decent trick, and this one was a fun hunt to me. I bounce around when I solve, so I saw the revealer relatively early in my experience, though I initially guessed DARK MATTER which fit. Then went back up and eventually found the dark E, dark N, and dark E in that order, and wondered what kind of 6-letter word relating to “matter” I might find. Later fixed my error, right around the time I found the dark R, and had fun trying to guess where the G and Y might be. I guess I’m saying is that I found puzzling through the theme to be enjoyable in itself, almost enough not to notice the bad fill.
ReplyDeleteLyrics from The Music Man: "The idle brain is the devil's playground." I could see how one's brain might mash that up with the biblical quote and come out with "idle hands are the devil's plaything."
ReplyDeleteI really admired the construction of this one - 12 entries that work with and without an "extra" letter...the sum of which letters happen to spell ENERGY, not to mention having to attend to the grid constraints. I thought that was terrific. My favorites were (N)ASCENT and (E)SPOUSE.
ReplyDeleteLike others, I saw DEATH STAR(E) early and then fell right into the NAP trap. And then was surprised again, when the R of ROLE took us out of the E-N pattern. But the biggest surprise for me was the G in THING - I'd been sure that the "Unnamed article" would be "THIs" or "THat"....which MOLTEN made impossible. So, I was flummoxed there for a while.
There was one more surprise: along the way I'd been keeping track of the letters and assumed we were finished with G-R-E-E-N - but then an extraneous Y appeared - and DARK ENERGY made a lot more sense than "dark green." A fun one to solve.
Poori? Never heard of that one, and it made me wonder how many other flatbreads I may need to learn. So I looked up "list of flatbreads" on Wikipedia and YIKES! Bati, Fari, Khakhra, Laffa, Lefse, Parotta, on and on. I quit counting there were so many, probably at least 100. Impossible to add them all to my mental flatbread file. It makes me feel... I was going to say deflated, but maybe unleavened is more apt.
ReplyDeleteAny cuisine that uses flour has a variation of a flatbread, seems 99%+ true
DeleteOverall, I enjoyed this puzzle, but there was one answer that, shockingly, no one else seems to have hated on and that is 26D. ESTAB? I had ESTBD and wasn't all that thrilled with that abbr. of ESTABlished but then Erykah BADU came along and set me straight.
ReplyDeleteLike Rex, when I read (POORly) the clue for 43A, I also thought Negev and took out RAMBLED because of it. Gah.
Weird in place at 50D instead of WACKO, eventually swapped out for WACKy, definitely messed with my SE. Really wanting DARK matter, having no idea on TYE, thinking 57D's handful would be an imp, meant the whole SE was MADDENing to solve but I eventually succeeded. Yay, Thursday!
Nice job, Damon Gulczynski!
@Teedmn, ESTAB looks wrong to me too but BADU was a gimme so ESTAB it is.
DeleteTo paraphrase Mitch Hedberg: “Toyota used to make Supras. They still do, but they used to too”
ReplyDeleteI spent way too long trying to fit every slightly sporty bygone Toyota model I could think of before I realized that they really meant one that is still being made.
Other than that, fun puzzle. Maybe a little easy for a Thursday, but I enjoyed the theme.
I'm not the car guy I used to be (bought a small farm and a truck - sports cars are not very useful out here) so I had not heard that the Supra was a bygone model. Seems they ceased production of the MkV in March of this year. So yes, bygone, but probably a few still available.
DeleteOn the tough side for me. I realized early on that letters were missing but I needed the reveal to make sense of the grid. The SE corner gave me the most resistance.
ReplyDeleteI did not know POORI, TYE, and NAMIB.
Costly erasures - Eon before ERA and, before I figured out the theme, baN before DEN and THis before THIN.
Liked it a bit more than @Rex did.
I’m clearly in the minority as I thought yesterday’s was a snap, while today was damn near a DNF for me. Lots of false starts until I understood the missing letter/quasi-rebus deal, but that realization didn’t help much. Fonditas? NISAN? EPIC DEFEAT (not particularly common vernacular)? Unfortunately, I am rarely on Damon’s wavelength.
ReplyDeleteLiving in Seattle, searching online for FONDITA brings up several entries for "Taqueria Fondita," which gets 4.5 stars on Yelp. Unfortunately for me, it's in the opposite side of town, and thus I was unaware of it's existence.
ReplyDeleteThis was a Saturday level challenge for me. Part of the problem was this was one of those wake up on the sofa after midnight solves using my phone. The mental fog was probably why I misread "desert" as "dessert" for a long time. That really slowed down NAMIB.
ReplyDeleteI quickly saw the missing letters in the black square trick but I never bothered to try and read what they were forming. I was too busy dredging up the crosswordese and trying to figure out where the next hidden letters would be.
It was fun to have both ROTI and POORI in the grid. ROTI is Monday easy while POORI was a Saturday level unknown. However due to the randomness of the missing letters I switched ROTI to NAAN and then had to switch it back.
I finished in the SE with the revealer being a complete surprise. I'm much more familiar with the term DARKmatter. The string or three letter entries in the SE were not nearly as helpful as their counter parts in the NW. TYE was an unknown but all was clear in the end.
Nobody knows for sure what makes up that there DARKENERGY stuff. A 70% Universal no-know!
ReplyDeleteBut ... now we have a new theory ... it's made up of cheater squares.
Cool use of energy vs non-energy themer words.
staff weeject pick: AGR. An energetic member of the primo-saurus-great quad weeject stacks, NW & SE.
some fave stuff: IDLEGOSSIP & clue. EPICDEFEAT. NOSCORE & ARMOR ?-marker clues.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Gulczynski dude. Nice 74-worder.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle [dark biter alert]:
**gruntz**
M&A
Hey M&A, we are on the same wavelength today! My husband was an astronomy buff and loved reading about things like DARK ENERGY, so I knew the term - and nothing else about it - until today. When the missing letters pit up (as I assumed they would) my first thought was, “Aha! It’s made up of cheater squares full of all my crossword typos!”
DeleteI always enjoy your posts.
Wacky before WACKO--which could have been clued better!
ReplyDeleteImpressive feat of construction. As @Roo pointed out, it's a "WOW" factor for me when words with and without the hidden letters are both real words. I caught on fairly quickly that we were dealing with some trickery and initially thought Rebus. When the revealer fell, it all clicked.
ReplyDeleteWhile there is some very nice long fill, I liked both the NW and SE stacks, the short fill tends to suffer a bit for a theme like this to hold up. Nothing made me wince, but nothing made go "oh nice!" either. I guess it was just a bit bland.
Still, color me impressed with coming up with such a cool theme. Good stuff, Damon!
I enjoyed this puzzle very much and was pleased to finish it without look ups notwithstanding BADU and TYE.
ReplyDeleteThere is so much I will never understand - DARK ENERGY, dark matter, parallel universes …. But thank you for this fine puzzle (which I much preferred to yesterday’s!)
The ENERGY/MATTER thing strikes me as a huge flaw that with some thought to the clue could have been avoided. Why not figure out a way to use the slow to push away from MATTER and towards ENERGY?
ReplyDeleteLoved that this puzzle turns cheater squares into a theme. Not cheaters after all.
ReplyDeleteI read Rex not the comments. One thing I agree with Rex today , I don’t like a lot (actually I prefer none often) of ice in cold drinks. Except water. For the reasons Rex gave b
ReplyDeleteThis put up a good fight but that made it more satisfying when the happy music played. I think it show some constructing chops to pull this off but having the DARK letters all in cheater squares was more an artifact than a designed feature. There are lots of cheater squares, many of them have no DARK letters.
ReplyDeleteI think DARK ENERGY, DARK Matter, worm-holes, etc. are in the space between science fiction and science fact. Science conjecture? Science fantasy?
Played pool a long time ago with a guy named SWANSON. He told me he had never worked a day in his life. Made his living shooting pool. He said it was one THING to win money in a pool room, it was another to get out of there with it.
¿Me lo permite?
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle gives the jig up too soon, but it was fun anyway trying to find the hidden letters. I wondered if they'd be random letters until I hit the revealer and then knew I was missing a G hidden in what was left to be done. Finding it was challenging but helped in clearing up a tough southeast section. Over way too soon, but still a blast.
I read the DARK ENERGY Wikipedia page in full, and it might have made more sense to me if it was written in Sanskrit. Apparently there's energy showing up from who knows where and it makes the universe race out at an ever faster speed and we can't see it or measure it. So, yeah, it's probably just God messing around with smart people. He does that regularly.
So many great phrases: I like adding E to DEATHSTAR. I love IDLE GOSSIP as the Devil's radio. TOPSY-turvy is another winner along with SWAN SONG. I will never object to a nice WACKO.
I am a lifelong ENCHILADA fan and live in Enchiladaville where we're all shaped like enchiladas, but I didn't know the word Fondita and neither does Go-ogle apparently.
You gotta admit when a culture decides a SCARAB beetle is going to be a symbol of anything, your dealing with some funny folks. Cockroaches are a normal part of life here in the southwest, and I have tried to treat them with some level of respect after following an account on Tumblr called "one nice bug per day." He calls some pretty ugly looking things "cutie pie" and seems to know every single species ever. I haven't quite gotten on board with worshiping roaches or thinking of them as symbolic. Mostly I find them dead on our sidewalk after attempting to pierce the fortresses of our perimeter bug spray. Also on the wildlife front, a mouse got stuck inside our bird feeder and my wife had to free him. It's all on the Ring camera.
😩 Yet another bread from Asia. This is what makes crosswording great. And SPHERE is a shape, and it's not necessarily solid. We've been over this before.
People: 4
Places: 1
Products: 3
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 18 of 74 (24%)
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Uniclues:
1 Gorilla with a galaxy gun.
2 Third base.
3 What a beetle performs before sneaking out of the back door to the pyramid.
4 Move I would celebrate at an all-you-can-eat French restaurant.
5 Tax code.
6 Say just about anything aloud
1 DEATH STAR APE
2 HOT NO SCORE
3 SCARAB SWAN SONG
4 END CREPE QUOTA (~)
5 THE IRS UNREAD
6 MADDEN SPOUSE (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Why I will always have a Bachelor's degree in literature despite reading very little. SKIMS LASTED.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've traveled extensively over central and south America for decades-- can't recall a single usage of the term "fondita"
ReplyDelete