New York Times, Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Each winter, in the depths of January, my family attempts to gather for Fondue Night. First, we dip all manner of vegetables along with fresh French bread into our wine-y cheesy mixture. Then, of course, we follow it up by dipping cakes and fruits into hot, rich chocolate. (There is no better use for coconut macaroons that have been in the freezer since Passover!) All of this is in my mom's bright orange fondue pot, circa 1965. Very retro and delicious!

Such was the inspiration for this puzzle. I made this puzzle before the winter, but we already knew that COVID would keep the family apart, and fondue-by-Zoom was not going to be worth trying. So, I turned the concept into a puzzle instead. Like making lemons into lemonade, or leftover macaroons into chocolate delicacies! I hope you enjoyed dipping into this puzzle.

Neat that all four dipped things cross the substance they dip into. That hadn't occurred to me during my solve, so I highlighted the pairs (below). Makes me admire the concept even more, seeing how tidily each item is partially above and partially below its horizontal answer.

TOE is a perfect example, timidly half-in and half-out of the SWIMMING POOL. BREAD into the CHEESE FONDUE makes my mouth water. And at first, I thought WICK deeper down into the PARAFFIN than the others was inelegant, but it'd be a useless candle without the WICK almost fully submerged.

I wasn't wild about NIB going into INDIA INK. I don't own a fountain pen, and old-schoolers are going to cry out that of course, they dip their NIBs into INDIA INK? I'd have preferred something like PEN into INK WELLS.

Check out how much grid real estate those crossing answers take up. Given those constraints, I don't mind a bunch of EDDA BARA MME IFIT ANET running throughout as much as I usually would. I still might give it a TKT, though, especially with the arbitrary sounding ONE SLICE.

(Then again, Theda BARA sparks joy for Jim Horne. I'll admit, he put up a memorable picture above!)

Will solvers get tripped up by INTERLAKEN crossing KARA? Or PHAEDRA crossing MOVADO? At the least, I'd hesitate before attempting to fill gigantic corners like these. As much as I value long bonuses, I'd be curious to see how placing a black square at the S of MANSION would have turned out. Any 6x5 region is difficult to fill, and when you run some long entries through and/or around it, there are bound to be trade-offs.

Great ANT MAN clue: literally a "small part" in the Avengers movies. Paul Rudd is so amusing in that role, amusing me as much as Ruth's picturesque theme did.