Constructor: Sarah Sinclair and Paolo Pasco
Relative difficulty: Medium (except that SE corner, yipes)
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THEME:"MONSTER MASH" (34A: Halloween-themed hit, with a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — four monsters (a DEMON, a TROLL, an OGRE, and a GOLEM) are each "mashed" into a single square ... it's a monster rebus! Boo!
Relative difficulty: Medium (except that SE corner, yipes)
Theme answers:
Wow, yes. This puzzle. This is how you do a holiday puzzle. First of all, it's appearing on the actual holiday that it's celebrating—not one, or three, or however many days earlier, as sometimes happens—so that's nice. And luckily for me (and hopefully you) that day is Thursday, which means it's party time. It's pull-out-all-the-stops time, burn-this-mother-down time. Actually, it's a fairly simple concept. It's just a rebus puzzle, with monsters in the rebus squares. But what elevates this puzzle is ... well, lots of things. First of all, the perfect revealer. Has that song title ("MONSTER MASH") really been sitting around for well over half a century and no one (til now) had thought to use it as a revealer in a crossword puzzle? I gotta believe it's been attempted, somewhere, at some time, but not to my memory, not in the NYTXW, anyway. The song has been in the puzzle, of course—seven other times—but no one (apparently) had thought to build a theme around it, despite the fact that it seems to be crying out for rebus revealer status.
- PRIDE MONTH / DESDEMONA (20A: June observance / 4D: "Othello" role)
- CRESCENT ROLL / TEA TROLLEY (22A: Pastry whose dough is used in making pigs in a blanket / 13D: Source of refreshments on a train to London)
- PROGRESS BAR / MICROGREENS (48A: Graphic showing the status of a download, say / 34D: Certain edible seedlings)
- MANGO LEMONADE / MONGOL EMPIRE (45A: Summer drink made from the fruits of two tropical trees / 35D: Khan tract?)
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| [Apollo & DAPHNE] |
But it isn't just that the revealer is perfect, it's that the puzzle unfolded in such an entertaining way, because the revealer only revealed so much. Sometimes, once you get a revealer, the puzzle becomes much easier to solve; I've often filled in all thematic material immediately upon getting the revealer or grokking the basic theme gimmick. But today ... well, first, I got the rebus pretty quickly; if you've ever seen, or read, or especially taught Othello (as I have), then it's possible that you noticed, or had it pointed out to you, that with Othello & Desdemona, "HELL" appears in his name and "DEMON" appears in hers. So I got DES(DEMON)A easy and thought "ooh, demons, cool," figuring I'd be seeing a bunch of demons today. But then the TROLL jumped out at me in the NE and I thought "OK, dang, we're gonna get all kinds of monsters ... cooler." And then I got the revealer and thought "damn ... damn that's just stupidly perfect." But even knowing the basic concept, I Still Had To Hunt Two More Monsters, and let me tell you, that last monster put up a fight. This is perhaps because the monster in question, the GOLEM, is ... not a Halloween monster? It's a figure from Jewish folklore, and since many Jews do not celebrate Halloween for religious or cultural reasons, GOLEM seems an unlikely guest at this party. But technically, a GOLEM is a kind of "monster," and all the revealer promises is that monsters will be mashed, not that all said monsters will be iconically associated with Halloween. And since the GOLEM did inspire Frankenstein's monster (which is very iconically Halloweeny!), judges say ... fair. Tough (as hell), but fair.
[It's time ... the official start of Christmas music season; sorry, I don't make the rules, it's Christmas season now]
I was so mad at CRESCENT—I practically shouted "they're called CRESCENT rolls!"—that when the TROLL finally popped out of his hiding place, I felt like the puzzle was listening to me. It played a little joke on me. Got me mad about a problem that didn't actually exist and then shouted "gotcha!" Good one, puzzle. OGRE was weirdly easy to get. I think I had the MICR- part of MICR(OGRE)ENS and just started testing "O" monsters ... not many of those! OGRE was the first thing I thought of, and bam, in went the greens. It's the dang GOLEM that took forever. Why? Sigh, well, I had the MANGO- part of the two-part fruit drink thingie, but I'd written in MANGO, leaving me with MONG- for the opening of 35D: Khan tract? (that's "Khan" as in "Genghis" and "tract" as in "piece of land"). It's really *that* clue that kept GOLEM hidden for a while, because even after I'd worked out the back end of the answer (-IRE), I kept trying to make MONGOLIANEMPIRE work. Oh, and that clue on PROPER didn't help, yeesh. Without the word "noun" anywhere in the clue, it never ever occurred to me that you would refer to a word as PROPER. PROPER modifies "noun," or maybe "name," but without that cue, I kept looking for some specific property of Polish (the language), and getting nowhere. "I know there's a monster in here somewhere, dammit! What the hell kind of monster is an "olianemp"?! Eventually I tried MONGOL (rather than MONGOLIAN) EMPIRE, and boom, there it was. So MAN(GO LEM)ONADE crossing MON(GOL EM)PIRE was a PROPER train wreck. I was lucky enough to know YEET and DAPHNE and WHAM!, and I was done. Well and truly—and happily—done. Puzzle solved, monsters defeated. Good time had.
Notes and Explanations:![]()
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Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Notes and Explanations:
- 17A: "Duh!," in textspeak ("OBVS!") — this puzzle is ostentatiously slangy, with OBVS and YEET (60A: Throw hard, in modern slang) and TRASH (as clued) (10D: Just terrible, in slang). I'm guessing YEET was the most troublesome of the three for many. I am not a native YEET sayer, but I've seen it enough by now to not be surprised by it. This is the third YEET of the year, fifth all time (it debuted just last year).
- 24A: Common situations in time travel narratives (PARADOXES)— had the PARA- part and (since I already knew it was a monster rebus) wanted PARALLEL UNIVERSES but good luck finding the monster that will make that answer work. (I dare you to go to your next Halloween party as a Lleluniv!)
- 28A: Its cups aren't supposed to runneth over (BRA)— this made me laugh.
- 36A: What the puck is going on? (RINK) — another perfect clue. At first I thought "shouldn't this be where the puck is...?'" But no, the RINK (surface) is what the puck is going (sliding) on.
- 30A: Last word in the full title of Cervantes's most famous novel (MANCHA) — familiar to fans of the musical ...
- 33A: Pigeonry (COTE) — I love the word "pigeonry." Sounds like the shenanigans that pigeons get up to. You know? Flying. Cooing. Pooping on statues. Your basic pigeonry.
- 48A: Graphic showing the status of a download, say (PROGRESS BAR) — had PROGRESS MAP here, for some reason. A MAP is also a "graphic" so it made sense to me in the moment, even if BAR is infinitely better in retrospect.
- 56A: Opposite of a jumbo shake? (TREMOR) — the puzzle is having fun. Not content to baffle you with hiding monsters, it also throws a lot of wacky clue curveballs at you. I appreciated the spirit of the whole thing. We even get bonus spooky content, just to Halloween things up a bit more: a haunted corn maze (dead END!); horror film star NEVE Campbell (of Scream fame); ominous FOGHORNS ... it sets a mood, this puzzle. Zany-spooky. I'm feeling it.
- 21D: Institution with A.T.M.s known as "Green Machines" (TD BANK) — no idea. Wait, I think my stepbrother works for them. I know he works for some bank, and commutes to Toronto several times a month. Hmmm. We don't have these banks near me. Not anywhere I have lived. Looks like the parent company is in fact Canadian. I only know the name because ... probably because of ads, or the naming rights on some stadium or something. Oh, and because they were recently in the news, not for good reasons (when are banks in the news for good reasons?): "On October 10, 2024, in a historic settlement with U.S. authorities, TD pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $3 billion in combined penalties for money laundering conspiracy over a decade, including failure to monitor trillions in potentially suspicious transactions annually, necessitating a four-year independent monitorship and comprehensive AML reforms." (wikipedia)
- 31D: Dating app for queer women (HER)— no idea. Luckily, not hard to infer.
- 49D: 2016 election nickname (BERN) — as in Bernie Sanders. I forgot about all that "Feel the BERN" stuff. Seems fitting that the only "nickname" I can remember from that (TRASH) election is "JEB!" Which isn't even a nickname. Just a sad, failed slogan. The least efficacious exclamation point in electoral history. Please clap.
See you in November ...
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