Start screaming or screaming

jump to: difficult evidence | today’s subject

Thursday riddle – You may ask yourself, “Why, on this day, do I solve my crossword puzzles differently than on other days? And why am I asking this now, when it is not even Easter yet?”

These are good questions, and the short answer is that today is Thursday. If you were solving this mystery the night before, just let me. I sure know what I’m doing.

For the people who do New York Times crossword puzzles, Thursday is kind of a distant day: The topic can be very creative, or it can be “a trickier one” than Wednesday, as crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz likes to put it. Many analysts — and I count myself among them — look forward to tricky topics, like recycles and entries that get off the page or take an unexpected turn. I see these quirky threads as a kind of palate cleanser. They disassembled my brain cells and prepared me for Friday’s puzzle twists.

Oh, right, the riddle. I thought the Elise Corbin subject was pretty clever, when I could find it. Maybe I need a stronger telescope.

And now, a comment on the reactions to last Thursday’s mystery:

I realize that some people are uncomfortable with topics that break the mold of how they think crossword puzzles should work, and that’s totally fine. No, it really is.

Everyone is allowed to have an opinion – and this next part is important – worded nicely and need to be the expression of a civil opinion. But there is never any reason to be unkind to someone who needs help understanding a subject or pretends not to like it. We are all at different stages of learning, and it’s hard to imagine someone being aggressive with someone who misunderstood this point.

Online commenters have options: they can criticize and try to make others feel as bad as they do; They can get their point across without being mean; Or they can quietly swipe and say, “It takes all kinds.” Here is more information About the kinds of comments The New York Times allows on its website.

I know some people will agree with me when I say it’s smart and some will disagree. this is good. But, please: let’s try not to attack each other or the creator. Remember, there are humans behind these keyboards. Above all, this is a game, and games are meant to be fun.

difficult evidence

Where the subject matter is difficult, transit entries and guides tend to be a bit more bland, so parsers are more likely to succeed. So, if Across entries bother you, rest easy.

23a. This is one of the “start” clues, which sounds as if we are supposed to consider the phrase a verb. The clue “Start yelling or yelling?” looking for Start From the words “shout” or “scream”, the answer is the letter S (phonetically written as ESS).

46a. If you’re not into Reddit: “Ask me anything,” or an AMA, is a popular forum on the Internet. Most of the time, the Q&A is between a celebrity or VIP and Redditors.

51a. I learned today (TIL) that there is a form of chalcedony called Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) This looks a lot like carnelian to me.

56a. This one almost missed my chest, until I remembered the rule about “partner” evidence. The answer to this type of evidence is a word usually combined with another, separated by the word “and”. In today’s puzzle, “peer error” is TRIAL, as in “trial and error”.

70 a. clues like “[Ignore that edit]Hinting at words or phrases that could be a synonym for what’s inside the brackets. If the editors change something and then change their mind, they can write the word STET in the manuscript.

7 d. I wrote in “eel” before AHI as “show on sushi menu”.

11 d. The word “escort” is slang for toilet, and English slang is LOO.

today’s subject

The Mrs. Corbyn subject is one that makes me feel as though I should spill the beans on the subject first, and then explain.

The revealer in 27D is PHYSICS, “the science that deals with phenomena written in ten letters missing in this puzzle.” The missing 10 letters, when read from top to bottom, spell DARK MATTER.

Now where are these letters exactly? They are not really missing out. They do exist, but most are inside the black (or dark) squares, with a few outside the grid on the left-hand side.

For example, D in DREAD at 1A to the left of the off grid entry. You have to admit that DREAD makes more sense as an answer to the idea of ”feeling malaise” than reading, which is the word Halal should write.

Similarly, the A in AISLES at 9A is below the black square between the entry and 5A, which precedes it. This is where I found out what was going on. I knew ISLES wasn’t the correct spelling for the answer to “wedding aisles”. She needed an A, and Mrs. Corbin provided it, even if it was hard to see.

I initially threw in the letters on the left after I solved the detector, because if you’re talking about dark matter, why would you put three of the missing letters out of 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 this topic might have really been raised if the missing letters were all under the black squares.

Spoiler alert: if you’d like to see an answer key with the missing letters highlighted, XWord Info provided one.

Creator Notes

The first version of this topic was not at all about physics; 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 vanishes.

All of my attribute entries were phrases with the word “snap” in them, but the word “snap” was missing, and there was a black box where all the word “snap” should be. I ended up hanging it off – neither the theme nor the packaging was particularly strong – but I came back to the Lost Characters idea after I considered DARK MATTER as a possible theme.

I enjoy making puzzles to illustrate interesting concepts, both in the scientific world and outside of it, so I really wanted to capture the idea of a hypothetical invisible matter in this puzzle rather than just play on the words “dark matter” in some way. It took a few tries to get the packaging streamlined enough, but for the most part, the final theme was just as I had envisioned it.

I hope you enjoyed the puzzle, and if you’re not familiar with the concept already, I hope it was a fun “TIL” (learned today) moment for you!