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

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[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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