The five unique letters of THE AREA HERE, fittingly NYT crossword clue

The clue “The five unique letters of THE AREA HERE, fittingly” asks us to identify five distinct letters from the phrase itself. If you examine “THE AREA HERE,” the unique letters are T, H, E, A, and R. When you rearrange them, they spell “EARTH.”

The answer is **”EARTH.”** It’s a clever bit of wordplay: not only are those the five unique letters in the phrase, but “Earth” also poetically fits the idea of “the area here” — as in the ground beneath us, or the place we live.