Thursday, June 8, 2023, Philip Koski

Today's puzzle involved another special message-to-solvers under the blinking "i"con. The note provided instructions for post-processing the grid data after completion to reveal the task assigned to staff at the "English site of W.W. II code-breaking," explaining that one had to swap circled letters with other letters. The next step was to determine what letter to swap in for the circled letter. That was revealed by properly parsing each group of shaded letters. For example, the shaded letters ITOO in 15A is to be read as I to O (or, change the letter I to the letter O). In this case, the swap resulted in a change from DECIDE ("End analysis paralysis") to DECodE, part of the secret answer. After swapping all the circled letters according to the instructions in each shaded letter groups, the coded message, and the answer to what they were up to at BLETCHLEYPARK, turned out to be (spoiler alert!) SeCREtLY DECoDE GerMAN MeSSAGES. It's a nice conceit to create a coded message in a puzzle about coded messages and the decoding was fun bonus activity after completing the solve. 

I was amused by "Like some jobs and jokes" (DIRTY) and "Org. that lets you carry on" for TSA was also entertaining. "It's due in Court" (PROCESS) held me up for a minute or two. As did "What's in the middle of Nashville?" because I was focused on the middle three letters, rather than the middle letter spelled out (VEE). I was totally duped by "Woodstock artist," wracking my brain for any performers I remembered as having played at Woodstock until. after quite a few crosses came in, I saw that the answer was SCHULZ. Ha! 

I thought the pair of clue "Prince, e.g." for SON was an interesting contrast to "One who's bound to succeed" for HEIR. Also, SPLEEN for "Bad temper" is very nice. 

The misdirection afforded by using Amazon in the clue "Amazon deposits" redeems, to some extent, the awkward SILTS. SISALS seemed like another odd plural, and OKS for "Licenses, say" seemed a bit of a stretch. That being said, I still think the message is clear: this was a fun puzzle. 

~Frannie.