Physicist Nathan with an early theory of wormholes / SAT 7-24-21 / The wrinkle in "A Wrinkle in Time" and the Cosmic Cube in Marvel Comics, for two / Auto pioneer Soichiro / Popular brand of alcoholic seltzer / Starting point of annual Spartathlon / Garment that might not be worn around the house

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TESSERACTS (4D: The wrinkle in "A Wrinkle in Time" and the Cosmic Cube in Marvel Comics, for two) —

In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes.

The tesseract is also called an eight-cell, C₈, (regular) octachoron, octahedroid, cubic prism, and tetracube. It is the four-dimensional hypercube, or 4-cube as a part of the dimensional family of hypercubes or measure polytopes. Coxeter labels it the polytope. The term hypercube without a dimension reference is frequently treated as a synonym for this specific shape.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word tesseract was first used in 1888 by Charles Howard Hinton in his book A New Era of Thought, from the Greek téssara (τέσσαρα'four') and aktís (ἀκτίς 'ray'), referring to the four edges from each vertex to other vertices. In this publication, as well as some of Hinton's later work, the word was occasionally spelled tessaract.

Seemed a bit trivia-testish at times (a physicist here, a supermodel there, an ethnic minority here, a Roman goddess there, and so on), and only COINKYDINK and OVER/UNDER felt like they really came to play, but it's a solid enough effort overall. WHITE CLAW really put me off the puzzle right away, just from a personal taste standpoint. It was a gimme, first of all, so ... I mean, normally, I guess I'd be thrilled to nail 1-Across on a Saturday like that, but somehow just knowing what WHITE CLAW is doesn't feel like a win. It's ubiquitous. Hugely popular, apparently. If I want seltzer I drink seltzer and if I want alcohol I drink cocktails, or maybe wine, occasionally beer. The whole "let's spike this non-alcoholic thing and see what happens" trend ... never got it. But jillions of people do. What bummed me out wasn't so much that I don't drink the stuff (who cares?) but that it feels so product-placement-y to put a brand like this at 1-Across. I'll be slightly surprised if their social media team doesn't do some jokey tweet or Insta post about this crossword appearance before day's end. Brands have been in grids for a long time, so there's nothing "wrong" with this one at all. Giving your highest-profile answer to a brand—that was just a mild bummer to me today. I also was weirdly distracted by a couple repeated letter patterns, namely TESS /  TESSERACTS and TATTOO INK / TIME SINKS / COINKYDINK). Maybe that latter repetition is a *good* thing, looked at from a certain angle—think of it as deliberate rhyme, or echoing, or singsonginess. But I probably would've found a way to replace TESS if I could've. Repeated four-letter strings don't usually bother me but then again they usually aren't at the front of both words (higher profile). ANIMA / BEANS / BESS, something like that ... though I wouldn't want to deprive the world of the "Sailor Moon" clue, so maybe there are other options) (32D: "Sailor Moon" genre => ANIME)