Start screaming or yelling (2023)

Pair chickens:misleading clues|today's topic

THURSDAY PUZZLE— You might be wondering: “Why is my crossword solved differently on this day than on other days? And why am I asking this now, when it's not even Easter yet?

Those are good questions, and the short answer is that today is Thursday. If you're cracking this riddle last night, just satisfy me. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing.

For the New York Times crossword solvers, Thursday is a wildcard day: the topic can be wildly inventive, or it can just be "harder" than Wednesday, as Will Shortz, the crossword editor. . Many solvers, myself among them, are anxious about tricky issues like bounces and posts that leave the page or take an unexpected turn. I see these twisted themes as a kind of palate cleanser. They relax my brain cells and prepare me for the vagaries of Friday's riddle.

Oh right, the puzzle. I thought Elise Corbin's theme was very clever, when I could find it. Maybe I need a more powerful telescope.

And now, a comment on the reactions to last Thursday's riddle:

I realize that some people are just not comfortable with topics that break the mold of how they think a crossword puzzle should work, and that's perfectly fine. No, really, it is.

Everyone can have an opinion, and the next part is important, well-written and politely expressed. But there's never any reason to respond poorly to someone who needs help understanding the topic or claims they don't like it. We are all at different stages of learning and it's hard to imagine someone being belligerent with a person they just don't get it.

Internet commentators have options: they can lash out and try to make other people feel as bad as they do; they can get their point across without being mean; or they can silently move in and say, "All types are needed."Here are more informationabout the types of commentary the New York Times allows on its website.

I know some people will agree with me when I say a topic is smart and others will disagree. He is well. But please: let's try not to attack each other or the builder. Remember that there are human beings behind these keyboards. Above all, this is a game, and games are supposed to be fun.

misleading clues

When a topic is this complicated, cross entries and their hints tend to be a little more gentle, so solvers have a better chance of success. So if the Across entries deceive you, take comfort in the Downs.

23A. This is one of those "Start To" tracks where it feels like we have to take the phrase as a verb. The track "Start Screaming or Screaming?" are looking for thestartof the words “scream” or “shout”, and the answer is the letter S (phonetically written as ESS).

46A. If you're not on Reddit: "Ask me any", or AMA, is a popular online forum. Most often this is a question and answer session between a celebrity or prominent person and Reddit users.

51A. Today I learned (TIL) that there is a form of chalcedony calledSARDthis looks a lot like carnelian to me.

56A. This one nearly tripped me, until I remembered the rule about "partner" lanes. The answer to this type of clue is a word that is normally associated with another word, separated by the word "and". In today's puzzle, "the counterpart of error" is TEST, as in "trial and error".

70A. Clues like "[Ignore this edit]" suggest words or phrases that would be synonymous with what's inside the brackets. If the editors change something but later change their mind, they can write the word STET in the manuscript.

7D. I wrote in "eel" before AHI as an "offer on a sushi menu".

11D. The word "facilities" is slang for bathroom, and the English slang is LOO.

today's topic

The topic of Mrs. Corbin is one of those who makes me feel like I should first talk about it and then explain it.

The developer at 27D is PHYSICS, the "Science dealing with the phenomenon explained by the 10 missing letters in this puzzle". The 10 missing letters, when read from top to bottom, form DARK MATTER.

Now where exactly are these letters? They are not really absent. They exist, but most of them are inside the black (or dark) squares, and some of them are outside the grid on the left side.

For example, the D in DREAD in 1A is just to the left of the off-grid entry. You have to admit that DREAD makes a lot more sense as an answer to the "Feeling in the pit of my stomach" clue than READ, which is the word the solver should write.

Likewise, the A in CORRIDORS in 9A is below the black square between the entrance and 5A, which precedes it. It was here that I realized what was going on. I knew that ISLES was not the correct spelling for the answer to "marriage clues". I needed an A, and Mrs. Corbin provided it, even if it was hard to see.

I was initially taken aback by the letters on the left after solving the reveal, because if you're talking about DARK MATTER, why put three of the missing letters outside the grid? Is it dark there too?

Turns out I was overthinking things. Sometimes a missing letter is just a missing letter. But I still feel like this topic could have been really elevated if the missing letters were all under black squares.

Spoiler alert: if you want to see an answer key with the missing letters highlighted,XWord Info kindly provided a.

builder's notes

My first version of this topic was not physics related; it was actually a Marvel-themed puzzle, playing on the idea of ​​the snap at the end of "Infinity War" when half the population of the universe disappears.

My thread entries were all sentences with "snap" but the word "snap" was missing and there was a black square where each "snap" should have been. I ended up shelving it, neither the theme nor the filler was particularly strong, but I came back to the missing lyric idea after thinking of DARK MATTER as a possible theme.

I like to do puzzles to illustrate interesting concepts, both in the scientific world and beyond, so I really wanted to capture the idea of ​​an invisible, hypothetical substance in this puzzle, rather than just playing around with the words "dark matter" from some way . It took me a few tries to get the padding efficient enough, but for the most part, the final theme was exactly how I had envisioned it.

I hope you enjoyed the puzzle, and if you weren't already familiar with the concept, I hope it was a fun "TIL" (Today I Learned) moment for you!

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The turning point

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