Thursday, February 2, 2023 - This crossword's not too easy, not too SARD 🙄

Today's crossword is a victory for STEM education, as the NYTimes crossword managed to get millions (?) of its solvers thinking about the problem of DARKMATTER. There were a few notable clues, the most prominent of which is the aforementioned 51A, Orangish-brown gem, SARD. That almost sounds like a debut, but in fact it has appeared a whopping 154 times in the NYTimes crossword, albeit the last time (before today) was in 2015, and its first appearance was on Sunday, May 16, 1943 (!). So, welc...