English site of W.W. II code-breaking / THU 7-8-23 / Plants from which rope are made / Sea urchin in Japanese cuisine / Device patented in 1970 as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system

So, where the 6 circled letters are concerned, change "I" TO "O,""A" to "E,""D" to "T," and "S" TO "R" and the circle-containing answers end up spelling out "what BLETCHLEY PARK was once tasked to do," i.e. SECRETLY / DECODE / GERMAN / MESSAGES:
To repeat: apply this code to the answers with circles:

• ITOOK => "I" TO "O"
• PRAISES => "A" IS "E"
• DISTILL => "D" IS "T"
• STORE => "S" TO "R"

Word of the Day: TASHA Cobbs Leonard (64A: Gospel singer ___ Cobbs Leonard) —

Natasha Tameika Cobbs Leonard (born July 7, 1981) is an American gospel musician and songwriter. She released the extended play Grace in 2013 with the hit lead single "Break Every Chain". The EP reached No. 61 on the Billboard charts. 

At the 56th Annual Grammy Awards Cobbs won the Grammy for Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Performance. She has also won 15 Stellar Awards, 3 Billboard Music Awards, and 9 Dove Awards. (wikipedia)

Forget the fact that my software didn't show the shaded squares, or that I've never heard of BLETCHLEY PARK and so filling in most of BLETCHLEY was just hilarious guesswork. Neither of these things is relevant. It was clear that the "shaded" squares were something I needed to pay attention to only after solving, and as for BLETCHLEY, well, I frequently don't know things, so who cares? These are not the reasons this puzzle is a giant drag. This puzzle is a giant drag for two other reasons: 1. the actual solve—you know, the part where you put words in the grid ... the solve ... the thing you do puzzles for ... the actual doing of puzzles ... that part, i.e. the whole part that didn't involve decoding, was like solving a very weak themeless puzzle. The fill was boring, often poor, and the only marquee answer you get is BLETCHLEY PARK. Whatever interest this puzzle has lies entirely *outside* the filling in of the grid. So doing the actual work was joyless. But (2.) you don't know the meaning of the word "joyless" until you do the decoding, which is the puzzle's *entire* raison d'être, and which is about as exciting and revelatory as solving a child's placemat puzzle (By the way, what is my frame of reference here? I remember being a kid in the '70s and some restaurants would have special placemats for kids with activities and stuff, but I don't know *which* restaurants. Was it IHOP?). Every time I have to do one of these post-solve decoder puzzles (yes, this is an actual genre), I think of how disappointed, and then angry, Ralphie is in A Christmas Story when he finally gets his "Little Orphan Annie" secret decoder ring and the big payoff—the message he's finally able to decode at the end of the radio show—is just an ad: "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE" ("Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?! Son of a bitch!"). Today's puzzle is a paradigmatic Ovaltine puzzle—no fun to solve, and with a payoff that ... doesn't.

I mean, I wrote in "I TOOK" and thought "wow, that is an awful partial, one of the worst I've ever seen, inexcusable in a grid that's this uncomplicated and easy to fill." And then (of course) I find out that it's one of the "shaded squares" that I can't see. But even if the shaded squares *had* been there, my opinion would've been no different. I'd just have realized sooner that the "theme" is making the actual *solve* bad. Too much is sacrificed for too little. There's no Thursday tricksiness here—not in the actual solving experience there's not. And there's no standout or entertaining answers along the way except maybe "NOT A PROB" (that one has some life) (2D: "'S all good"). No actual thematic content besides the central answer. Instead, you've got convoluted instructions and an anticlimactic revealer—the least complicated "coded message" of all time. No OOHs here today. Not one. The puzzle USES UP most of my goodwill in making me read those long instructions, and then exhausts it with the final message. Did anything else happen in this puzzle? I don't remember. I struggled a bit, mostly around BLETCHLEY. I thought DECIDE *was* DECODE at first (22A: End analysis paralysis), so that was awkward—realizing that I had already unintentionally cracked part of the code with my first (seemingly reasonable) guess. Never heard of TASHA Cobbs Leonard, but I never listen to contemporary Gospel, so that's not surprising. Crosses were fair. I had ATAD as my first answer at 57D: Tiny bit (ATOM). Just a bunch of normal dumb stuff. Nothing memorable or remarkable. RENEGADE and KEEN-EYED are a nice-looking pair. The solve wasn't miserable. It was just blah. And the decoded message didn't offset the blah. That's all.


Bullets:

• 1A: Sea urchin, in Japanese cuisine (UNI) — totally forgot this. Eel is UNAGI, so for urchin you just ... take the "ag" out of UNAGI and ... there you go, UNI (this is a terrible mnemonic and I'm gonna forget UNI again the next time I see it, for sure).
• 40A: Device patented in 1970 as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system (MOUSE) — had -OUSE and still no idea; wrote in DOUSE (doesn't "dousing""indicate" the "position" of water underground? Did I make that up? Oh, dang, that's "dowsing")
• 18A: Notes to self? (SOLOS) — they're sung by yourself, not to yourself, boo.
• 26A: One who's bound to succeed? (HEIR) — not really understanding the "bound" part here. You can give up your inheritance, can't you? I really wanted this answer to involve BDSM—anything to liven things up!
• 41A: What's in the middle of Nashville? (VEE) — the letter "V," right there in the "middle" of the word "Nashville"
• 61A: Shelter from a storm (INLET) — maybe the hardest answer in the puzzle for me. I just could not get my head around it. Probably by design. Of course I was thinking of a human being needing "shelter," not a boat.
• 42D: Spend time on a doodle, perhaps (DOGSIT) — "doodle" here is a Labradoodle (a popular crossbreed of two breeds, I forget which* ... dachshund and whippet?)
• 49D: Things that Jackson Pollock famously eschewed (EASELS) — this took me a bit. Really wanted the answer to be PANTS ... again, anything to liven things up!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*I do not forget which

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