"Bad plan!," in Southern slang / SAT 1-6-24 / Unfiltered brew / Comment after a revealing moment / Out-of-focus effect in photography, from the Japanese for "blur" / Cells that handle low-light vision / Thin slice of silicon at the heart of an integrated circuit

Constructor: Ben Tolkin and Julian Xiao

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BOKEH (5A: Out-of-focus effect in photography, from the Japanese for "blur") —

In photography, bokeh (/ˈboʊkə/ BOH-kə or /ˈboʊkeɪ/ BOH-kay; Japanese: [boke]) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image, caused by circles of confusion. Bokeh has also been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light". Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause very different bokeh effects. Some lens designs blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce distracting or unpleasant blurring ("good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively). Photographers may deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions, accentuating their lens's bokeh.

Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it is often associated with such areas. However, bokeh is not limited to highlights; blur occurs in all regions of an image which are outside the depth of field.

The opposite of bokeh—an image in which multiple distances are visible and all are in focus—is deep focus.

Well this ended up being *much* easier than yesterday's puzzle, so people will undoubtedly like it more, but I don't know that it's any better. I should say that I actually *liked* yesterday's puzzle pretty well. Probably should've been a Saturday, but it was really well put together. Loved YOINKED and SMARTASS and the clue on DEAD BATTERY. All the longer answers were solid to sparkling. I feel like I got caught up in my struggles yesterday and neglected to say the positive things I felt. I thought about yesterday's puzzle as I was solving this one, which was much easier but felt less impressive. The long answers just missed me today, for the most part, and the puzzle's attempts to be fresh were hit-and-miss—a little TTH (trying too hard) at times. I loved HAZY IPA (10D: Unfiltered brew), but it's really hard to get excited about a brand name like ACUVUE or something as mundane as UNMUTES. As for BOKEH, that was just five random letters to me, I'll confess. I've probably seen it on my camera phone's needlessly detailed array of options, but it never sunk in. I can see how that answer might be exciting to some, though, so that's fine. The biggest issues I had were with the marquee longer answers—the crossing 15s. Hmmm, what order to take these in? ... So, how about the order in which I solved them. Probably easiest to show you my grid after my first encounter with 29A: "Bad plan!," in Southern slang:Also, do people still / really say "PAGING DR. FREUD?" That's the kind of cutesy thing that, thankfully, no one in my immediate vicinity has ever said. I wish I could be more excited about it. I was more excited about "DAYS OF OUR LIVES," to be honest. My wife's secret history involves her complete addiction to "AS THE WORLD TURNS" (15) (five NYTXW appearances, dating back to 1976), which I always confuse with "DAYS OF OUR LIVES" (14) (four NYTXW appearances, dating back to 2002). I kinda miss afternoon soaps, a staple of midday programming when I was a kid. In the '70s, my mom would put us down for a nap and then watch "Ryan's Hope." I think this was what they now call "Me Time." I also liked HUMAN PYRAMID today, and the fact that it's kinda sorta at the top of its own pyramid of answers (10A: Stunt for three, six or 10 people, typically). I mean ... yeah, if you squint and are feeling generous, that is a pyramid of answers that it's a part of.