This was delightful, and a very satisfying theme.
My cup runneth o'er! With dark energy! What a great Thursday puzzle. Neat tricks with missing, excuse me, dark letters. (Is that an anti-rebus? Or would an anti-rebus square be left blank? Or have negative entries?...ooh, I like that). Anyway, an engraved invitation to talk about cosmology. You guys are so lucky. Dark Energy may be what most of the mass/energy of the universe is made of. And we really don't know what it is. And if we don't know what it is, it may not be real. Most I can tell you is that whatever it is "dark energy" is, that's probably a bad name for it. Werner Heisenberg of the famous Uncertainty Principle is said to have remarked that "Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it's stranger than we can think."
@Francis I don't know. Some can think pretty strangely. I was about to tell a funny story involving P.A.M. Dirac but I've decided you all will have to wait until our cosmology book including a second generalization of relativity is published. It needs a few instances of comic relief.
@Francis as Adam Riess said on wait wait don’t tell me back in 2011, at least it’s got a name. Try getting the public to accept that we’re trying to measure Λ. Evolving dark energy is a lot cooler. <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/141167268" target="_blank">https://www.npr.org/transcripts/141167268</a>
@Francis I would argue that the unknown gunk that makes up 70% of the universe is DARKmatter, not DARKENERGY.
@Francis Duelling sources? I have it as: "The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." - J.B.S. Haldane, British geneticist See here for a discussion of the origin: <a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/12/25/universe" target="_blank">https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/12/25/universe</a>/
Dastardly clever. And cute that STAB is in here, as in "stab in the dark." To come up with all the words needed, that work with and without each letter in ENERGY, and place them more or less symmetrically, have room for the revealer, AND have two super triple-stacks, that's some brio. And anyone who hasn't seen Gloria Swanson's swan-song in Sunset Boulevard is in for a heartbreaking treat. This year I skipped Passover due to illness. Does that make me a Nisan Rogue? And I like the various supporting kinds of dark energy in this puzzle: the Death Star is the manifestation of the Dark Side of the Force; idle gossip is a kind of dark energy, as the "devil's radio" alludes, fueling the destruction of reputations if not lives; Erykah Badu is frequently celebrated as a prime example of unapologetic, magnetic, fiercely confident "dark feminine energy," and molten obsidian sounds like some pretty dark energy. Scarabs (a fancy word for dungbeetles) are decidedly not dark energy. In ancient Egypt, scarabs were prized as powerful magical amulets capable of resurrection, eternal regeneration, and divine protection. Because dung beetles rolled eggs in balls of dung—symbolizing the sun's daily cycle—they were ascribed the power of the sun god, who, unlike Amun Ra, Isis and Osiris, rarely appears in these grids: Khepri.
@john ezra I feel justified in telling my favorite Passover joke, although most non-Jews won’t get it, so my apologies—but you will appreciate it: A British Jew was being honored to be knighted by the Queen. It happened to be the first night of Passover but his family encouraged him to go and miss the Seder. He came home breathless and said “The queen speaks Hebrew”. His family didn’t believe him; but he said, “No, listen. You know when you get knighted you have to kneel down and say a Latin phrase? Well I got all flustered and couldn’t remember it. All I could think of was a line from the Passover Seder, so I said ‘Ma nishtana ha laila ha zeh mekol halaylot’. And I swear the queen turned to her advisors and said ‘Why is this knight different from all the other knights?’”
@john ezra Wish I could triple-line this comment! Sooooo on point. Thank you.
How good is this?! The missing letters work in both the Acrosses and Downs; they spell out DARK ENERGY in order; and, taken away, they leave real words in both the Acrosses and Downs! There's even a dastardly trap set for us on top -- and I fell right into it. Having figured out the theme, more or less, at DEATH STAR, I was simply looking for a real word that, with a letter added, would be the answer to the clue. The answer was obviously NAPE and so, with great confidence, I wrote in NAP. But (brilliant trap really!) the answer is APE. Because it's not the last letter that gets removed as in DEATH STAR, but the letter that's in the black square and the one that's needed to spell out DARK ENERGY. And once I had that, I knew the revealer would be DARK ENERGY. Which was a big help with THING/SWAN SONG and UNREADY/DENY. Are there a lot of three-letter answers needed to make the theme work. Yes, and who cares? This is very clever, very well-executed, and great fun to work out. It's going into my running list for POY nominations. Kudos, Damon!
Great puzzle! I wonder if this was easier to solve on paper. It was hard to keep track of the dark squares in my head.
@Barney Agreed! I do it on my PC and had to take a screen snip and fill in the letters as I solved it, to keep track.
This was my first Thursday crossword so I was nervous to say the least. It was pretty hard for me, especially with the hidden letters. Still super fun though, I can't wait to get better like some of you pros in here!
@Hevani Congrats! Glad to hear you had fun. They're definitely tricky, but with practice you'll be a pro in no time.
@Hevani Thursdays are always a bit like entering a forest blindfolded. You fumble around, unsure of what’s ahead, and you may run into a tree or two. But when the mask comes off and everything is revealed, it’s a pretty great feeling. I love my Thursday hikes. I hope you will, too.
@Hevani Congrats, Hevani. It's incremental but you'll find that it gets better and better, easier and easier to solve.
I always enjoy when puzzles incorporate the black squares in the answers, so today’s puzzle was a treat for me. I had a spot if trouble in the SE, because I had dark matter and wacky for a while, and couldn’t immediately make sense of ADV, but eventually straightened that mess out. It was nice to see POORI get some crossword recognition of the sort usually reserved for ROTI and naan.
@Marshall Walthew I'm always amused By identical clues.
Finally, a proper Thursday! Very artfully created, and a theme that snuck up on me. I had the two E’s first, so thought it was just E’s at first, then the R. Then I finally got to the revealer. That took a bit too as I had WEIRD first. Even when I got DARK I had DARKMATTER first, then DARKENERGY dawned on me. Even then I almost had an EPICFAIL because I wouldn’t give up WANKY and then WACKY. Finally got there! This was a terrific construction. For those who didn’t like the asymmetry of the dark letters, you can’t have everything, and crossing entries that work both with and without the dark squares is difficult enough. A little glue here and there—obscure car brands, alternate spelling of flatbread, and even I try to avoid Jewish calendar months—but nothing too out of sorts for a Thursday or ungettable from crosses. Thanks, @Francis, I was counting on some erudite elucidation from you, although not much to be had. Your Heisenberg quote reminded me of the Feynman quote on quantum physics: “If you think you understand quantum physics, then you don’t understand quantum physics.”
@SP Hmmm.... wondering if we'll ever see WANKY?
Was going nowhere in this one before nailing my first “dark matter” (the G). There’s something so satisfying about working out what’s going on in a puzzle and 3 or 4 doors instantly opening in front of you! I really enjoyed this one!
@David It really becomes addictive.
@David It just occurred to me that "addictive" is probably more accurate than we think. The calls I hear from the seasoned solvers against the Great Easing makes a lot more sense you one realizes that the chemical the brain makes during crosswords are literally something you come to depend on. And with the puzzles too easy, they never get that. That is truly distressing, I say without a hint of sarcasm or irony. Fortunately, I'm not there yet, but I can certainly understand their plight.
The lack of symmetry for the 'dark' theme squares is very off-putting.
@George Right? Such a sloppy thing to do (by the NYT IT people?) in an otherwise fine puzzle.
@George You'd probably see the heavens open and an angelic choir appear, and complain that the clouds had wispy edges. I haven't read Lewis's note yet but I feel confident in saying, "What he said."
Try again: One of the best aha moments of the year! Made me go aah, not ahh!
I predict a lot of complaints Me, I loved it. I did wish I could mark the squares I figured had to contain letters, which appear after solving but not before-- but it was a good Thursday. A little slower than my average, but not unpleasant.
@Isabeau I predict that there are going to be a lot of complaints as well, but will add that most of them will be from people who don’t fully understand the theme. (See prior day’s comments.) PS. “Most” does not mean “all.”
It is absolutely *fascinating* to me how a black square containing an extra letter seems to bother fewer people than a white square containing an extra letter. End of observation, carry on!
@Adam Agreed. TBH the letter in the black square bothers me a lot more simply because I have to keep remembering it on every pass through the grid, and cannot just write it in.
@Adam I think it's that it's a one-time thing, and it's seen as creative. Rebuses have been around for decades. A lot of the complaints on Wednesday were because the rebus appeared on that day, which threw people off.
There are fewer comments with this type of puzzle because (a) newbies don't need to ask how to put more than one letter in a square and (b) there are no issues about which letters must be entered and what entry order is required. Also, the revealer reveals all. There have been other harder "black letter" puzzles that caused quite a bit of pushback.
Adam, Alternate theory: the repulsive force of this trick was somehow even stronger than a rebus, and people ended their attempt not with a nasty comment, but in a whimper.
Breakthrough finally came when I realized the revealer was not a pun meant to be read "dark N or G."
Not sure how this is fair. The squares are black to indicate that there isn't a letter in that square. This puzzle is going in the bin.
@Drew You must be new here. This type of theme has appeared before many times. Trickery of this sort used to be the norm on Thursdays before the Great Easening. It's also completely fair, as this is a puzzle. It's meant to be puzzling.
@Drew Thanks for the chuckle, Aussie. You may find that loosening up increases both your success and your happiness....
Damon 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. Today 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!
I went from BLACK HOLES to DARK MATTER to DARK ENERGY … I‘ve never heard of dark energy before and would have preferred either of the other words as revealer but the fact that the six black squares spell ENERGY totally makes up for this. So fun, really well done!
@Marie I had DARKmatter for most of my solving time as well, and when I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the SE corner I finally removed it, and everything then fell into place.
@Marie I had the exact same progression!
I recall the first time I completed a puzzle with hidden letters. I think they were literally off the grid in that case, but that's not important to my comment. It was several years ago, but I was even then a very experienced solver. At this point in time I've been solving for close to 50 years; then it was somewhere between 40 and 45. I had to refer to the column, and even then was challenged to get the theme. This was probably mostly because I was simply outraged that I was expected to figure out that certain letters simply were not IN the grid! I wasn't ready or able to let this idea into my crossword brain. Once my outrage settled to minor irritation, I rethought the whole experience and realized the fun and genius of it. Fast forward to today, and I immediately grasped that some letters were hiding behind dark squares. I needed the revealer to fully understand and appreciate the theme, but did take the time to appreciate how my solving skills continue to develop even at my advanced age! (66. . . Not really THAT advanced, but still. . . ) In short, I loved the puzzle, appreciated the "trick", and completed it slightly under my average Thursday time.
Third degree Nerd Alert: There's not much to say about Dark Energy. Or Dark Matter, for that matter (see what I did there?). Actually that's not really true, and even if it were, it wouldn't stop me from saying just a little bit about *why* we think there is missing energy/matter in the universe. Think about our solar system, for a moment. Sun at the center, Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc. The planets nearer the Sun orbit the faster--Mercury screams around the sun every couple three earth months. Pluto, whether a planet or a dwarf planet, takes 250 earth years to get all the way around. But if you try to think of all the suns in a galaxy kind of acting like a big complicated solar system, it works in some ways and fails in another. It is true that galaxies rotate around a center. But it rotates more as a solid body, like the spokes of a bicycle, rather than like the solar system. This gets quite involved, but basically scientists came to the realization that all the matter we could see in the universe (stars, planets) didn't add up to enough mass to make the galaxies behave as they do. So there's something missing. And that's what we call Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
@Francis On a somewhat related note - I read yesterday that the position in space of our galaxy, the Milky Way, changed 10 billions years ago as a result of a colision with another galaxy, called - and I kid you not - the Gaia Sausage. I thought a sausage would rather be associated with Ouranos than Gaia... <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/21/milky-way-disc-flip-collision-dwarf-galaxy-astronomers" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/21/milky-way-disc-flip-collision-dwarf-galaxy-astronomers</a>
@Francis only dark matter is required to explain the rotational effect you outline. Dark energy drives the expansion of the universe, which only becomes apparent on much larger scales than that.
Despite my pet name for this constructor (i.e., Damon the Demon), I was delighted to see the byline. Every so often I dip into his thoroughly enjoyable book of rejected puzzles (complete with commentary and solutions conveniently on the next page, if one is moved to cheat.) It is a tiny bit too big to go with me to MD appts, (hint for next time, Damon!) but it lives on my dining-room table, close at hand... Oh, THIS puzzle. It did take me slightly longer to catch what I was meant to do with the missing/spare letter, but eventually I ran accross the Reveal and it helped me accept that not every puzzling puzzle entry needs a shoe-horn or two letters in a box, or what-all. I am in a weakened condition, (PT will be after breakfast, ugh; yesterday a slew of lab orders)... gosh, the fun never stops when you reach A Certain Age. A few of these clues were downright cruel: "Letters before ".gov".... Srsly? We could be here all day! I wanted VOLCANIC fr "obsidian"...all LAVA is MOLTEN at one time, but it certainly doesn't always produce the fancy stuff...Oh, well. The -OL- was correct, at least. Y'all have a good day and mind your doctors.
@Mean Old Lady As if the parade of appointments with doctors weren't enough, I had to go to the dentist this morning for 6 mos. cleaning. At least that is okay so far, but Monday a new oncologist. Sigh. I am no longer of A Certain Age, I am now in the realm of Old Age. I don't think you're there yet.
Oh boy. A gimmick puzzle (groan).
@R.J. Smith It's a Thursday. On Wednesdays, we wear pink.* On Thursdays, we solve gimmick puzzles. *Optionally.
Loved this! Excellent puzzle that made me think. More please!
This was a pretty easy puzzle, I worked out the theme very quickly BUT…. What a fine example of this kind of gimmick! All of the unclued fill worked perfectly as common words or expressions. I thought ESTAB was kinda weak, but at least that was the clued answer. I love a clean grid where the gimmick doesn’t leave any gobbledygook in the raw grid (unlike the recent “raising capital” puzzle)
@Jeb I abbreviated "Established" about a dozen ways before I realized there was an E under that black square. E under the black square...there you go dark energy.
@Jeb Yeah, a fine example, but way too easy and also, as often, the revealer clue was unnecessary to solving. PS in the midi “chide out”?
I must have been in cosmic alignment and loved every minute of this slow burn, holding in my mind's eye the first 3 missing letters found (E, Y, G), figuring out that ENERGY would be part of the revealer, searching for the rest of the missing letters, keeping track in my mind of each one I found, and finally filling in DARK with a smile and an "aha!" Thank you, Damon, for the brain workout and for showing us what constructor chops are all about! My musical interlude for today comes via Led Zeppelin's SWAN SONG, an instrumental written by Jimmy Page. In the 80s, he founded the band The Firm, together with Paul Rodgers of Bad Company. Page then pulled SWAN SONG out of his back pocket and asked Rodgers to write lyrics for it. The result was "Midnight Moonlight": <a href="https://youtu.be/WaQ1gL_zgGQ?is=0cbAHK8h_Q-2NYL0" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/WaQ1gL_zgGQ?is=0cbAHK8h_Q-2NYL0</a>
Barely enough breadcrumbs to find my way. But I found the ENERGY to push on. Can't DENY the cleverness of this puzzle. Kudos to Damon Gulczynski!
Not a good day for my first NYT puzzle. I didn't know you could just break the rules of a crossword. Well that's a frustrating end to a frustrating hour of toil.
@George, Thursday is one of the worst days to start on the NYT crossword puzzles. They are, along with Friday and Saturday, usually the toughest. Start with Monday and you'll have much better luck and probably more fun.
Thursday is trick day, Friday and Saturday are tough, and Sunday is unpredictable. Monday is a good day to start.
@George Nixon, the "rules" of crosswords are quite fluid, actually. You may need an update user manual! Don't be discouraged.
@George Nixon Welcome aboard. Thursday NYT CWPs normally have a think-way-outside-the-box gimmick like this. Most solvers who stick with Thursdays come to love the puzzles, though it's often not love at first sight. So I get your reaction, but I suggest rolling with it for a while, reading Wordplay as needed, and keeping an open mind to new challenges. A few people decide to skip Thursdays altogether.
@George Nixon Please don’t judge based on a Thursday puzzle with a trickier theme. I hope you will stick with it; Friday and Saturdays don’t have a theme, and earlier I. The week are usually more digestible to a new solver.
@George Nixon y’know you don’t have to finish it if you’re not having fun!
@George Nixon I will NEVER forget my first Thursday rebus puzzle. I probably tried to crack that thing for 6 hours. Try again tomorrow. It will be hard, but no tricks!
@George Nixon You’ve only just begun to find out how the rules can be broken. Buckle up. It’s a fun ride.
@George Nixon Hope you will keep trying the puzzles, George! I think my intro to rebuses was actually on a Weds puzzle-- though it was constructed to be obvious that that was what you had to do. I was so amazed that I called my puzzle-loving relatives (doing local-paper puzzles not NYT) to tell them about this incredible thing.
Hmmm am I missing something? Did I sleep through a day?? This should be the column for Wednesday’s column … not Thursday
@Carol SN I came here to say the same thing. Where is the discussion of WEDNESDAY'S puzzle? Have both the person writing Wednesday's blog AND the person responsible for Thursday's lost their mind? Sigh.
@Carol SN, The Thursday wordplay column was up online and easily opened from Tuesday night onward. I'm surprised no-one caught it, or, if they did catch it, couldn't do anything about it. It's happened a number of times before, and always feels like I've time-traveled one day into the future. But if you try the link to the actual puzzle in this errant columns, it doesn't work.
Gotta be that guy that points out that mathematically, a sphere is not a solid but a surface. The correct term here would be a ball.
@Jake (Insert here my usual comment about specificity making for overly-easy clues)
@Jake "He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking." --- Spock, about Khan during the battle in the nebula The 3-sphere S^3 is a three-dimensional manifold (albeit without boundary and incapable of being embedded in R^3). Isn't that sphere a SOLID? By the way, Merriam-Webster offers: solid---a geometrical figure or element (such as a cube or sphere) having three dimensions. Just playing Devil's advocate here.
@Jake What if my sphere is full of DARK ENERGY?
@Jake You're the second 'that guy'.
I feel like the easy downs at the start gave away some of the fun. It’s Thursday. Some things didn’t make sense. But I trusted the process. I think a great intro to Thursdays. It will make you furious if you don’t know what’s coming. But you start to learn Thursday tricks. And this is definitely part of the toolbelt. Spent too much time trying to find my error. Reflexively entered SSn. Given the cross is some Jewish? Month, didn’t notice anything. Speaking of which. Where’s that one dude that went crazy on Jewish stuff, about a month ago. It was like a drive by of loathing. Nice Thursday. Perfect for 2026 methinks.
@Weak "Drive by of loathing"...Excellent! I was in deep hurt until I realized that it's not a ROLL, it's a ROLE.
As my Gen Zs say: this is big dark energy!
The NYT crossword has jumped the shark. I always liked that expression. It derives from a moment late in the run of the "Happy Days" TV series. Out of ideas, the writers have The Fonz go water-skiing, in his leather jacket. A shark shows up, and he jumps it. If you look up the definition of "crossword" you'll not find what we saw today. Letters that don't exist in the white squares but are somehow to be imagined as existing in the black squares is not a crossword. Now, some may say I'm a fuddy-duddy, a crossword conservative who brooks no changes from the norm. Kinda? I think the art of a *good* novel crossword is in providing a twist that makes sense in some interesting and compelling way. A great successful example was the puzzle that had "Ship of Theseus" as an answer, then various alterations answer by answer and eventually, "Ship of Theseus" as the last in the series. Strictly speaking, one should not see the same answer twice. But it made sense and illustrated the thought experiment. Knowing some bits about the thought experiment, one could solve the puzzle. There isn't anything about "dark energy" that logically leads to "put letters into the dark squares." It's gotten to the point where constructors and the editors approving the puzzle are effectively saying "if you have a theme answer that has a term like 'dark,' 'missing,' 'gone,' 'double' etc. you can justify anything in the grid." Feh. I really like my morning crossword. Bring it back, for I am sad.
The shark was jumped years ago, and also recently. I gather you missed the puzzle earlier this year requiring a letter in a dark square, or the three puzzles last year that did too?
@Asher B. Yes, you are a fuddy-duddy. Avoid Thursdays, is my advice.
@Asher B. The challenge is now on for a puzzle with the theme “jump the shark”. Names of sharks missing from words? Names of sharks jumped to the row above? Asher, I know you’ll really enjoy it, heh heh.
@Asher B. How long have you been solving for? Because such puzzle themes (whether or not you enjoy them) have been a staple of the NYT, particularly Thursday, for quite a long while—and were possibly more prevalent previously. I am currently 10 years back in the archives and see novel and unusual themes regularly. Barry and others can speak to how long they may go back even before that. So again, you may have your own preference or tolerance for out-of-the box themes, which I respect, and certainly can express it—but just wanted to point out that it isn’t a new development, and will probably continue (and if it doesn’t, would alternatively disappoint a large number of us who do appreciate less traditional themes.) And you are right, you should search the revealer for keywords—some not very explicit—for hints about the puzzle’s trick. This is a pretty standard convention, and again, YMMV whether you appreciate it or not.
Nothing new about this. <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/BlockText" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/BlockText</a>
Wow! I loved this puzzle. It took about five minutes over my average but that's OK. I actually laughed when the added letters appeared at the end. Surprised? Disappointed? That so many comments here were negative. Good work Damon!
I wasn't expecting a rebus today, so it was nice to see some energy in Damon's puzzle. I hope it wasn't too dark. Or obsure.
@Barry Ancona I wouldn't say I found it obsure.
Did I really just solve a Thursday puzzle with no help from the Wordplay column? It must be a very easy one. A fun one, though. Enjoyable.
@John You can pat yourself on the back this time; it was not easy for most of the xwstats.com subscribers: 🌎 Global Stats Difficulty Hard Median Solve Time 13:46 Median Solver 2% slower ⚡47% of users solved faster than their Thursday average. 22% solved much faster (>20%) than their Thursday average. 🐢53% of users solved slower than their Thursday average. 24% solved much slower (>20%) than their Thursday average.
After 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: Ode 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”
@Lewis Cute idea! (Hang onto that day job!)
Mean Old Lady -- Oh, I'm no Peter Valentine!
@Lewis, And you inspired me for an alternative, including the dark e-n-e-r-g-y from the puzzle. Ode to an anonymous Argentine player (from an anonymous fan): My DEATHSTARE broken, I cannot DENY that I was UNREADY for this To be his SWANSONG. This THING they call “soccer” is But a NASCENT thought here. But I ESPOUSE the “Beautiful Game”, my ROLE, a simple spectator. Head down, one hand at my brow, th’other at my NAPE, I RAMBLED to the exit, ill-EQUIPPED for the long trek homeward after epic defeat. Instead, I edged into a public house, - ESTAB. 2019! Even the taverns incipient! My dark energy wanes. Can’t I get my quota of sympathy. Alas, I taste the end.
Maybe it was getting up early for the cats, who knows! But my xword senses picked up on the theme once I clicked into the northeast and I was off to the races. Very nice couple of back-to-back lovelies this week. Thanks, constructors and editors!
Recognized the theme as soon as I hit the revealer (although it's been a little while since we've seen it here) and quickly had all but the G. Took stepping away and coming back to realize it could only be a black square in a very specific configuration. Fortunately there were only two of those (with only two sides free) between the R and the Y. Changing THIs to THIN[G] made that whole area of the puzzle make a lot more sense. And the theme words without their dark energy were also real words. This puzzle made the physics, language, and puzzle parts of my brain all happy together.
I had DEATHSTAR(E) all worked out, and then I added (N)APE, so I was off and running. I also had DARKMATTER confidently filled in. "Clever!" I thought. "The letters are dark, just like the MATTER." (I figured it out eventually.)
@Fritz BLACKHOLES also fits. Ask me how I know! 😅
Okay, I have to give a rare thumbs down. Although it was clever, (upon seeing the final result) I had to rely on a number of look-ups to even approach getting entries to make sense. The missing letter feature caused me to plug in quite a few wrong words. Some of the cluing was more than a little vague as well. Congrats and a tip o' the cap to anyone who completed it without assistance.
I don’t know the construction term, but the missing letters were all the black squares that were extra in both directions. I had DARKMATTER stacked onto BONECHINA to start with. Quite a mess! Fun puzzle.
@NotMyRealName Good eye! Those are called cheater squares or, more generously, helper squares. I prefer the latter term, and I think they'd have be helper squares in this situation, considering their role in the theme. There are a few helper squares in the puzzle that aren't hiding a letter, but your point stands — every letter in the hidden "energy" is in a helper square. Glad you liked the puzzle!
Whew. And Wow. Typical tough Thursday for me, but finally tumbling to the trick was just a huge turning point and that's always a nice touch. And... thought it was just amazing that all of the theme answers were valid words or phrases even without the hidden letter (though of course not matching the clues). DEATHSTAR SPOUSE ASCENT APE QUIPPED STABBED etc. etc. Wow. And of course a puzzle find today. I'll put that in a reply. ....
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened. A Sunday from December 14, 1997 by Nancy Salomon with the title: "Hey, It's a Living." This one was all in the clues, but a quite amazing piece of work. Some examples: "Job for a restaurant worker?" HURRYUPANDWAIT "Job for a statistician?" RANKANDFILE "Job for a plastic surgeon?" NIPANDTUCK "Job for a mathematician?" BEFRUITFULANDMULTIPLY "Job for a relay racer?" TOUCHANDGO "Job for a debutante?" COMEOUTANDPLAY Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=12/14/1997&h=39a" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=12/14/1997&h=39a</a> .....
tricky, tricky, but I got through without peeking at the Wordplay column. I had "prepped" before I knew there was a hidden "e" to make it "equipped," but got it eventually. Nice how the dark energy letters magically appear at the end.
@mirle234 Today's Wordplay column was actually released yesterday, and I got through the first couple sentences before realizing the error. Funny how nobody has mentioned that gaffe...usually so quick to pounce.
@Grant A number of people, including me, noticed Tuesday night when the column for Wednesday and the column for Thursday both were posted. If you just access the column using the i icon in the Games app, I don't think you'd have noticed. If you access Wordplay on a browser via the NYTimes website you were more likely to.
I don't always get the Thursday NYT crossword without a hint or two.Today I got it with no help. I enjoyed the trickery. Bravo to the creator.
I loved it, really enjoyed today's puzzle. I struggled a bit but I got there.
@Enough Same. I wanted to turn it into a rebus, but I like the constructor’s solution even more.
Really excellent puzzle today. Just the right level of crunchiness and cluing that challenged me, but when I finished, I wanted another.