Orangish-brown gem / THU 2-2-23 / Holiday dependent on the lunisolar calendar / Mythological being with a horse's tail / collar iconic Ruth Bader Ginsburg neckwear at the Smithsonian / One of the two main ingredients in idli

Constructor: Elise Corbin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "DARK MATTER" — Ten answers have their first letters missing: those letters spell out (from top to bottom, L to R), "DARK MATTER," which, the puzzle tells me, is a phenomenon dealt with by the science of PHYSICS (27D: Science that deals with the9o0p [sorry, cat walked across the keyboard] (27D: Science that deals with the phenomenon spelled out by 10 missing letters in this puzzle):

Theme answers:

• DREAD (1A: Pit-of-the-stomach feeling)
• AISLES (9A: Wedding walkways)
• REACH (20A: Get through to)
• KITTY (21A: Pool of money)
• MARIA (40A: Natalie Wood's role in 1961's "West Side Story")
• AIDES (42A: Capitol Hill staffers)
• TAUNT (54A: Make fun of)
• TRIAL (56A: Error's counterpart)
• EASTER (69A: Holiday dependent on the lunisolar calendar)
• RAILS (71A: Train tracks)

Word of the Day: DISSENT collar (31D: ___ collar (iconic Ruth Bader Ginsburg neckwear at the Smithsonian)) —

To express her disapproval over a court ruling, Ginsburg opted for a black bib necklace with rhinestones by Banana Republic. The dark colors and punk-inspired design certainly stood out from her collection of predominantly white lace jabots. "It looks fitting for descent [sic!]," she told Couric. (Harper's Bazaar)

• • •

Quick write-up today, as the bus comes early and the new cat (Ida) has learned the subtle art of coming into my office and crying for food and knocking things over etc. and since she is still healing from her traumatic pre-shelter experience, I am in Extremely Indulgent mode (i.e. not throwing her out, which is causing ... let's say, distraction):

[Live look at "distraction," aka Ida]

I was startled by how easy this puzzle was. The most struggling I did was at the very beginning, not getting 1A: Pit-of-the-stomach-feeling right away. Got it all—very easily—from crosses, could see that READ was wrong, thought about it for two seconds ... and realized the "D" was missing. That's pretty much the puzzle right there. I didn't know where it was going, but I knew the gimmick's basic idea. I thought maybe all the missing letters would hang off the edge of the grid like that, but nope, some of them are just ... missing. This is the part of the theme I don't think works. If your concept is DARK MATTER than the missing letters should *all* appear in the "dark" (i.e. the black squares); the ones hanging off the edge of the grid ("D" in DREAD, "M" in MARIA, "E" in EASTER) undermine the core concept. Apparently “DARK MATTER” is “dark” because it’s “hard to detect” (Wikipedia), but you’re dealing in B&W here and so the fact that “dark” didn’t have anything to do w/ black squares felt odd/awkward. Further, PHYSICS is an incredibly anticlimactic revealer. . . on the other hand, the "DARK MATTER" discovery kind of makes up for that. Except then you (if you're me) realize that not all the "matter" (i.e. the missing letters) is "dark" (implicitly hiding in black squares). And then you're back to disappointment again. All the headless words (i.e. the themers) look like real answers in the grid, which is a nice touch, but also a necessary one—this puzzle with gibberish in the grid would be unbearable. It's a neat idea, overall, but the execution is a bit wonky.

The fill, on the other hand, is very wonky. Lots of short fill, lots of repeaters, lots of crosswordese, not a lot to lift it out of the tired and ordinary. HYSTERICS and DECK CHAIR are solid entries, but ESS ENT EMS NOUS STET ... there's just so much of that. Also ... there are ... well, just guess how many "IN"s there are in this puzzle? Without looking, what would you say? Hint, there are so many that I stopped counting at a ridiculous number, figuring that there's no way there could be more ... and then there was another ... and another. Bringing the total to [drum roll] SIX! To be clear, I'm never going to complain about an "IN" dupe if the "IN"s are not crossing and at least some distance away from one another. I might not even notice. The same is true with TO, AN, UP, ON, all your very short prepositions (or articles). But if you cross them, ick, no. And this puzzle crosses "IN"s ... *twice*!!! (WENT ALL IN x/w AS IN, PEER IN x/w EXCEL IN). And then there are just two more "IN"s (IN GENERAL, IN STORE). This is comically bad. I don't ... I ... yeah, someone will have to explain what the hell, because what the hell? You could have clued at least one of those answers in way that would make the "IN" disappear:

The worst thing, and hardest thing, in the puzzle is AROUSER (44D: One giving a wake-up call), because again, I ask, what the hell? "Stop being an AROUSER," he shouted, improbably, as he tried to go back to sleep. [One giving a wake-up call] is a hotel desk clerk or more likely a phone bot, neither of which I would (ever) call an AROUSER. Yeesh. Haven't seen SARD in a while. Ugly, ugly word, but it's real enough. No idea about DISSENT collar and nearly botched it because I thought 36A: Commercial lead-in to Clean (OXI) was OXY with a "Y"! OK, gotta run, the cat was calmly cleaning herself for a while there, but that time is now over and the stirring threatens to become something more mischievous, so I'll see you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Platte River people / WED 2-1-23 / 2018 John Travolta flop / Half of D

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Hard, for a Wednesday?? 11:48 (Also, note the oversized grid)

THEME: Aliens — There are three types of alien vehicles as the theme answers. Each of these seems to (visually) be "beaming up" an earthly item

Theme answers:

• Science fiction vessel-- FLYING SAUCER
• Trash hauler [Mooooooo!]-- SCOW
  
• Science fiction vessel-- MOTHERSHIP
• Place for a drink while traveling [Hoooonk!]-- BAR CAR
• Science fiction vessel-- SPACE CRAFT
• 1976 hit by heart [Heeeelp!]-- MAGIC MAN
• Science fiction energy rays that may suck up earthly bodies, as depicted three times in this puzzle-- TRACTOR BEAMS

Word of the Day: IMAGO (Adult stage in insects) —

In biology, the imago (Latin for "image") is the last stage an insect attains during its metamorphosis, its process of growth and development; it is also called the imaginal stage, the stage in which the insect attains maturity. It follows the final ecdysis of the immature instars.

• • •

Hello besties! Thanks in advance for tuning in to another Malaika MWednesday. I'll start with a little update... Last time I was here, I speculated that I knew one of the constructors of the puzzle from elementary school. Well, I was right! She read the post and reached out to me, and now perhaps we will record a crossword puzzle podcast together. That was a fun reminder for me that these blog posts are nice because they allow us to use a fairly individual activity in order to make connections with other people.

Other things.... My solving snack for today was plain potato chips sprinkled generously with chaat masala. And my solving music was this SZA song which makes me want to weep in the shower. Onwards!

Y'all, I struggled so much with this. And actually, I'm still not 100% sure I got everything that's going on. If I've missed an aspect of this puzzle, please correct me in the comments-- I read every single one of them. Lots of things slowed me down here.

First of all, we had some long across answers that had nothing to do with the theme at all-- KLEPTOCRATIC was brand new to me in a way where I thought maybe the theme was going to be invented words. (BALLET DANCER made me realize these were just there as non-theme entries.) And then SCOW was also new to me!! I've never heard this word in my life. So I wondered if maybe the vertical "beamed" answers were going to be nonsense words.

Once I was able to click COW with the [Moooo!] in the clue, I felt like the next "beamed" entry should be another animal-- a goose, obviously, to go along with [Hoooonk!]. Boy was I wrong. An added element of confusion for me was the way these "beamed" entries were hidden. A COW has nothing to do with a SCOW at all-- it's just some letters inside the word. By contrast, a BAR CAR is indeed a CAR and a MAGIC MAN is indeed a MAN. Some people nitpick a lot about these inconsistencies, and some people not at all-- I only do so when the inconsistencies greatly slowed down my grasp of the theme, and that was the case here.

And the kicker for me was that I have never heard of the term TRACTOR BEAMS. So then I was trying to reckon TRACTOR with CAR, and getting nowhere. I am a huuuge fan of revealers, because they tie the puzzle together. But this revealer didn't do that for me, and so I think I would have preferred the puzzle without it! (The visual of a UFO beaming up an earthly item feels pretty familiar-- I don't need an explainer.) What do y'all think? Was this term known to you? Did it help you "get" the puzzle?

Bullets:

• [Ingredient in a hurricane] for RUM— This was easy for me since I am very familiar with the hurricane cocktail. In February 2020 I made several gallons of hurricane punch (pictured above) for a big house party we had and it was a hit.
• [East Coast Amtrak service with the fastest trains in the Americas] for ACELA — My favorite depressing fact about the ACELA is that, while it is the fastest train service in the US, only 10% of it is fast enough to qualify as high speed rail. I went to high school in Italy and would frequently take (as a 15yr old!!) the amazingly efficient Frecciarossa and Frecciargento trains. I wish we had anything like that here.
• [1976 hit by Heart] for MAGIC MAN —1976?? Phew!! That is trivia that is not for me. I had "Manic Man" here at first, since the crossing (IMAGO) is a word that's totally new to me. I know exactly one song by Heart and the only reason I know it is because Fergie covered it when I was in elementary school.
  

xoxo Malaika

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