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Khan tract? / THU 10-31-24 / Throw hard, in modern slang / Pigeonry / Certain edible seedlings / Summer drink made from the fruits of two tropical trees / powder (manicure type) / "Duh!," in textspeak / What the puck is going on? / General during the Clone Wars / Like Polish, but not polish / BeBe's sister, in a gospel duo / Campbell of horror film fame / Graphic showing the status of a download, say
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Constructor: Sarah Sinclair and Paolo Pasco
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?)
Dip powder nails is a technique in which you or a nail technician dusts or brushes a pigmented powder over your nails to create an opaque layer of color. It got its name because when you’re DIYing it at home, you can literally “dip” your nail into the jar of powder (more on the specifics below). Dip powder nails typically require a few coats of powder for opacity before you paint a liquid sealant painted on top to harden the powder. Finally, they're sealed with a top coat for shine. The result? A manicure that can last around three weeks without chipping or lifting. (cosmopolitan dot com)
• • •
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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:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[BeBe's sister, in a gospel duo]
- 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 ...
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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115 comments:
Before grokking the theme, I put in CRESCENT at 22A and realized that 13D had to be TEA(something) and that a T wasn't going to work for the fourth letter, but I moved on, figuring I'd come back to it when I failed to get the happy music. Then I finished, got the happy music and realized that my T had morphed into [TROLL], making 13D make sense. I got cheated out of a rebus, but that's okay because I hate rebuses.
My enjoyment was marred by the sure feeling that I'd seen this theme recently. Some sleuthing revealed the Vox crossword from October 28th, 2023. However I'm pretty sure I've never done a Vox crossword. Spooky!
My problem with the SE was that I precipitously, if perhaps anachronistically, threw MONGOLIA off the M.
So much fun! It put the “puzzle” in Crossword Puzzle. But I was done in by golem because I stubbornly insisted the last rebus had to be in the same row as ogre…”is there a monster called a lemp?”
same! I too threw in MONGOLIA and was pleased as punch ... until I wasn't
Just an FYI that Jeb is indeed a nickname… first, middle, and last initials of John Ellis Bush.
Really wanted the Khan tract to be Xanadu, in which did Kubla K a stately pleasure dome decree.
I just couldn’t crack the code on this one - GOLEM and its associated crosses were never going to come to me - with all of the types of fruit drinks, I was never going to get MANGO LEMONADE.
I can appreciate the construction, and agree with Rex that MONSTER MASH was a perfect reveal, but unfortunately I’m so bad at rebus puzzles that this one is in the unsolvable category for me (the usual sprinkling of trivia like CECE, YEET, DAPHNE, and KENOBE didn’t help either).
Too bad, I would have liked to have given it a go - if this one is in your wheelhouse, enjoy and Happy Halloween!
A great theme and a fun but (for me) challenging solve. I like non-symmetrical rebuses - make us work for them.
And bonus points for erudition, with DAPHNE, MANET, MONETS, DESDEMONA, Don Quixote.
Is it fair to use a ? clue on one of your themers (Khan tract?)? I guess it's about as fair as having a WoE for a themer (MICROGREENS).
Had “OK Don’t”, instead of “Or Don’t” at 37A. Don’t know much ‘bout dating apps, queer or otherwise, so “Hek” didn’t raise a flag during the solve. Took a few minutes to track that down when I didn’t get the happy music. (Upon review, “Her” seems obvious, but I like the idea of a dating app named “Hek”, short for “What the Heck”).
I finished but with Mangoade and Mongpire, was so confused by what mongpire was supposed to be, but it gave me the finish credit on the app even without Golem.
Sarah and Pablo--this was an AWESOME Thursday Halloween puzzle! Of course we knew a lot just because of what day it was, so it wasn't too tough to discover the first Monster at DEMON.... but then the other ones were tougher, and like @Rex, that southeast corner was really tough. Had no idea about Daphne or Wham so even after getting the GOLEM that corner was rough. But finally, one square at a time, got it to fall. Especially enjoyed FOMENT crossing FOGHORNS, PROGRESSBAR, PARADOXES, both MANET and MONET in he puzzle, and especially "OR DON'T"! Thanks! 22 minutes for me... not bad for a Rebus puzzle : )
I suspect this puzzle separated the amateurs from the pros. Eventually got demon to fit, but couldn't get GOLEM , DNFed. Did love the puzzle, though!
Not as keen on this one as the big guy is - cute theme and well built but the overall fill was brutal - definitely not up to PPs norm. Apt - and obviously temporal revealer that assisted the trick. CRESCENT ROLL was the one that turned me.
The Searchers
Other than TREMOR and FOMENT the fill was flat. Second IDEATE this week. The 3s and 4s abound and we’re OBVS out of convenience. WHAM, DIP and YEET in the same block should have been edited out.
Neat theme - but a not so pleasant Thursday morning solve.
Linden ARDEN Stole the Highlights
50 Halloweens ago, I “beat the devil” on Joker’s Wild and won thousands, a lot of cash for a 20 year old student. During the “get to know the contestant” portion, Jack Barry brought up my screening interview anecdote of playing hockey in a pickup game with the current governor of Minnesota (who had been an Olympic player - wasn’t Tim Walz, OBVS!).
“Is it true he said ‘The Puck Stops Here’?” the emcee quipped.
A Barry DADJOKE, decades before the term was coined!
Anyway, today’s hockey pun reminded me of that long ago and far away personal anniversary. So thanks for that - and a pretty fun Thursday!
GOLEM was a really neat trick, did not see it coming and the fill in both directions was thoroughly idiomatic. Bravo, a nice start to an All Hallows Eve that is sadly forecasted to be HELLishly toasty. Don't binge on too many reeses pieces butter cups people!
I keep hoping for a Thursday puzzle that someone over 65 can solve. I'm ready to give up.
Puzzle of the year! Challenging here due to the fact that Mongolia fit in perfectly going down, so it took extra time to suss out that monster. A sensational solve, thanks to the constructors for a memorable romp!
Is Beto a nickname? I assumed it was and ….
Took me forever because MANGONADE didn’t seem impossible.
GOLEM is a CGI monster in the famous horror trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Great spooky triple feature for Halloween if you haven’t seen them! Stars Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler as elves who have to defeat GOLEM in a combination of ranged and magic combat inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, another crossword staple.
Had BEto instead of BERN which matched well enough that I couldn’t figure out what was wrong in that section for a while.
You may remember the last NYT creation by Sarah and Paolo, an octagonal-shaped puzza (combination of pizza and puzzle, their term), with a stuffed crust, that is, the entire outer edge – 40 squares! – consisting of rebuses. (6/27/24).
High props to the two for pulling today’s consummate theme out of the ether. How could it not have been done in the 62 years since “Monster Mash” came out? It seems so OBVS! (Hi, @Rex!)) But no, it hasn’t, not in the Times or any other major outlet. I bet the constructors were astonished and thrilled when they discovered this.
What makes this puzzle top tier is not only its perfecto theme and revealer, but also witty clues (i.e., those for BRA, RINK, and MONGOL EMPIRE), lovely answers (FOMENT, TREMOR, MINCE, CANDOR), freshness (eight NYT puzzle answer debuts, including MANGO LEMONADE, MICROGREENS, and MONGOL EMPIRE), and brain-engaging bite.
Gorgeous creation all around, Sarah and Paolo, a beauty and the beast puzzle. Thank you so much for making this!
Funny crossword moment:
For [2016 election nickname] I was thinking HER, as in Hillary Clinton’s catchphrase “I’m With Her”, even though it didn’t fit. And then it popped up at 31D.
This is similar to a malapop, where you insert an answer, it turns out to be wrong, then pops up elsewhere in the grid. But not exactly, because HER didn't fit.
The term "malapop" was invented by constructor Andrea Carla Michaels, BTW.
The most horror-inducing thing in the puzzle is 5A because you can be sure that the demon troll will either foment insurrection if things don't go his way or foment vigilante persecution if things do.
@ anonymous 7:58 That's Gollum
Monster Mash was used yesterday as the revealer in the Apple News Puzzles. Same grid location too.
I really needed to know TD Bank or Desdemona off the top of my head to get that corner, and I did not know either well enough to figure it out. Also since when is Lemon a tropical fruit? I was trying ever combo of Passion, Dragon, Guava, etc and then it was Lemon? I have Lemons in my back yard. Not tropical. I didn’t love this as much as every one else. Way too many obscure things that were in key spots.
Hey All !
Had OkDONT for the one-letter DNF! Don't know my Queer Women Dating Apps, so HEk sounded fine to me. Although, HER is a whole lot better in retrospect.
Probably already pointed out, but Rex missed ELVIRA in his list of Themey related items. Did you know she has a house here in Las Vegas? Wondering what she's up to on this Halloween day.
Being the ever unsophisticated dude I am, had to Goog for DAPHNE. Totally stuck in SE corner. But after that, finished up that corner faster than a ghost takes to scare you. (Terrible!)
In NE, had CRESCENT/HORS_/TEAT_Y, and was scratching the ole head trying to get some sort of monster in that spot. Is EMEN something? HORSEMEN? But TEAEMENY isn't a thing. Figured it was a TEATROLLEY, just couldn't make it work. Finally saw it was CRESCENT ROLL, slapped the forehead in a D'oh way, and got the Almost There. See previous HEk/HER.
Neat puz, at first looking for named Monsters, as in Dracula, etc. This is the one puz that needed a ROO (Har, RooMonster, Hi @pablo!).
No PARADOXES in my time travel novel, Changing Times. Shameless plug. Search for it on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com using my name, Darrin Vail. 125 pages, get it read in one sitting! It's the right thing to do. Har!
Happy Thursday! Happy Halloween!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
That's GOLLUM. And they were books first, which inspired D&D, not the other way around. And they're not horror movies.
You’re thinking of Gollum, that’s the character from LOTR. The GOLEM is a monster from Jewish folklore
Fun and enough challenge to be very satisfactory. As for most of us apparently, I found the SE pretty tough, since I had no idea on YEET OR WHAM and GOLEM was a hard time coming. I knew a G had to be involved and I spent quite awhile trying to figure out how goblin, ghoul, or ghost could possibly do the trick. Also PROPER took awhile. And I didn’t know about DIP polish so I tried to make GEL fit. However, I’m happy to say I worked it out without cheats, so happy day!
I just really wanted the monsters to be monsters in the monster mash song
Too much trivia crap!
Nancy hasn't posted yet but I'm guessing this is going onto her POY list. It's on mine.
Wonderful rebus squares. GOLEM, DEMON, OGRE, TROLL. Each making a pair of non-routine entries.
Rex was in fine form today. An essential part of pigeonry is "pooping on statues."
Is a lemon tree a "tropical" tree? I suppose it is. was trying to work with Mango banana or something like that. I live in Minnesota and folks grow lemons here, so the "tropical" really threw me off.
Nice memory,
There are times I wish this blog had reaction emojis. Consider my comment a big thumbs-up LIKE. I’d laugh, but it’s just too sad to be funny.
As a Gen Z solver who is usually pretty good at the text speak clues that everyone groans at, OBVS was actually the hardest of the three slang terms for me today because my friends (and I think most of my generation) are much more likely to abbreviate it as OBVI which is what I had at first and had to go back and fix
Exact same thing happened to me!
My mind never comprehends the rebus square.
Same
mildly annoyed that none of the monsters mentioned in the song are included: vampire, ghoul, zombie, wolfman & dracula are in the lyrics!
As Rex said, a brilliant eerie theme, wicked cluing, and a little trick all combined to become a fun Halloween treat. I loved finding each MONSTER and then getting to MASH it into the little square. Plus “what the puck” which is my new favorite saying and all-time favorite crossword clue.
Constructors, a bloody good job well done. While your assignment was of grave consequence, you took a skeleton grid and costumed it with ghoulish creatures who will haunt me the rest of the day. It was a real scream.
Thanks for the clarification. I never knew that.
Nice thought, but no, in LOTR it's "GOLLUM" not GOLEM
Happened to me as well, exact same spot at the end.
Did anyone else want OBVI or am I just out of touch with text lingo?
OkDONT also my downfall…I didn’t even remember to check the K cross so I did my usual “check puzzle” to reveal mistake.
Great story!
Waylaid by the GOLEM MANGOLEMONADE cross. Also never got to the Clone Wars episodes of Star Wars so no help there. Getting the other rebus squares was enough satisfaction for me that I didn't go googling. Plus I remembered YEET from previous outings although I have yet to encounter it anywhere outside of crossworld.
TIL (practicing my textspeak) about DIP powder. Now I'll know what's going on at my next manicure, which will be my first.
Wow you guys. Well done SS and PP, Sure Stumped me but Provided Pure pleasure. Thanks for a scary good Halloweenfest.
Bob, hang in there! This was a tough puzzle. Also, there were many names in clue/answers that might give younger people problems like Babe Ruth, Medgar Evers, Truman Capote, and Elizabeth Arden.
If your BRA cup runneth over, is it TEAT ROLLEY?
Is Olive Garden's famous Bottomless Salad an example of MaCROGREENS?
I struggled with 25D. I couldn't xactly xtracact XACTO xcept for xcellent crosses.
Cop 1: Did you see his identification?
Cop 2: No, the SOB ingested it?
Cop 1: He ingested it?
Cop 2: Yeah, he IDEATE.
I'm sure hoping LABRAT beats the Orange Felon next week.
Loved this puzzle and finished without difficulty even though I'm 71 years old (hi @Bob Mills!). Thanks for a great start to our Halloween, Sarah Sinclair and Paolo Pasco.
You've gotta be kidding.
I agree. It’s a dilly.
That's what I had at first too.
I really, really tried to make goblin work for way too long. I saw mango, so it seemed OBVS.
Haha…I can’t speak to whether you are out of touch (I’m a bit too old to say) but I put in OBVi at first….
Cuidado con los demonios, trolls, ogros, y por supuesto, Golem.
We're in a new house in a cul-de-sac and it appears most of our neighbors never come outside, so we have no resource to determine how many ghouls we might encounter tonight. Hopefully more than four. I'm buying a big bag of treats just in case.
Loved this puzzle, but I'm another victim of the southeast and WHAM and DAPHNE did me in today. I could see both in my head, but names weren't coming along for the ride. I will never see crescent rolls the same way. I liked Elvira. The Wikipedia page on Manet's Olympia sent me down quite a rabbit hole. Great reading and links.
Propers: 14 {whoa Nelly}
Places: 1
Products: 8
Partials: 3
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 28 of 70 (40%) {Wrapping up October with a two-day Gunk-Love-In.}
Funnyisms: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: BRA ... geez that's a weirdo clue. HUEY ETA BRA ... heh.
Uniclues:
1 Write "Citizen Kane."
2 Why the shirtless dude on the float in a gold spandex leotard has a bit of a tummy.
3 Ye Olde place to buy "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
4 Inevitable expense when murder and torture is on the menu.
5 Is it Poison? No. 5? Or J'adore?
6 When Puerto Ricans tell the truth according to the Mad Grampa's Campaign Rallies.
7 Written approval for London Fogs.
1 FOMENT SLED BIT
2 PRIDE MONTH CRESCENT ROLL
3 CAPOTE SHOPPE
4 LAB RAT RE-ORDER
5 MINCE HER AROMA
6 TRASH CANDOR
7 TEA TROLLEY PERMIT
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Standing on your toes in bloody high heels while wearing a nurse's outfit and a miniskirt (like nurses do) covered in spiders with sultry Dia de los Muertos make-up. HALLOWEEN ASANA.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I personally loved TEA TROLLEY
Me too.
Pretty tough for me. I knew something was going on but it took me a long time to figure it out. I do have a couple of excuses: (1) I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia today and have just started taking antibiotics and (2) I had the ball game on while solving and it got pretty interesting….or maybe it was just hard.
PROGRESS BAR and MANGO LEMONADE were only vaguely familiar, the MONET I knew, the MANET and the Bernini I didn’t (plus DIP was a WOE so the D in DAPHNE was a guess). Other WOEs: TDBANK, CECE, HER, and kinda PROPER.
A fine tricky Halloween puzzle, liked it a bunch!
Me three!
For Beezer: Thanks for the encouragement.
Nice one! In the NW, after feeling disgruntled at being expected to know some arcane 5-letter Othello character, PRIDE MONTH unmasked both DESDEMONA and today's holiday DEMON. Loved it! I next got the reveal, making it quick work to spot the TROLL and OGRE, but like others I had to fight for the GOLEM, not aided by first going astray to Mongolia, misspelling KENOBe, and wondering if the Polish answer was fooling around with [eu]OPE[an]. Erasing + clean slate + correcting Obi Wan's name did the trick.
This was the rare day when I knew all of the names, and I really liked the variety, from the arts, to politics, sports, entertainment. I liked the placement of HER in the center, as it seemed to me there were more women's names than usual.
If you're not familiar with Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, this 5-minute video is worth a watch.
When a clue says "2016 election nickname," and the answer is someone who never became a candidate, that's misleading. The clue should have read, "2016 election CAMPAIGN nickname." And BERN isn't Sanders' usual nickname; BERNIE is (his real name is Bernard).
Me too
In the books it might be Gollum, but for the movies they definitely dumbed it down to GOLEM. That’s Hollywood for ya!
Still liked the puz.
"Puzzle solved, monsters defeated. Good time had." says it all. Loved this one. Knew something was going on as I labored where PRIDEMONTH and CRESCENTROLL ended up, got the reveal and that AHA! moment and went off to find the other two. Couple stumbles like thinking UK trains must have a TEAcar, wanting DianNE with Apollo for some reason, and happy with obiwan before KENOBI, but it all fell together and offered a fun ride in the process. Great theme, great clues, great fill, great layout (those crosses and headstones) and fun through and through. Happy Halloween to all.
Jews in America celebrate Halloween just as much as Christians in America do. I'm not sure why you're making this differentiation when it's usually religious Christians who are the ones who are vocally up and arms about it.
I'm just going to cop out & say (as usual)
"I don't like rebuses."
Monster Mash or not (OBVS I couldn't do this puzzle ... but I thank you both & Happy Halloween :)
I got cheated. In my case, I got the music even though I only had 3 monsters. Wondered what the heck a TEA TEY was but figured it must be a British thing. The app did not replace the T.
I also struggled with Golem, having first perfectly fitted in Mongolia and not thinking that a Lemon is a tropical fruit (Google tells me it is, even though it originated in the Himalayas, and I mostly associate lemons with Italy and California, neither of which are tropical climates, but I digress). Once I sussed out Proper, I was also trying to fit Mongolian Empire. Fun puzzle though!
Much as I love my Thursdays and their rebii, today’s NYT software was accepting entries as correct from only the initial letter. Having put MONSTER MASH in as the first entry, I assumed it would be a slam dunk finish in record time—a perfect Halloween trick ensued instead. Perhaps had I looked at the constructor byline…..ah well.
Mine too
Growing up in Buffalo, New York, we would always hear the jingles for Toronto Dominion Bank on the Canadian television stations. Now shortened to TD Bank.
Great! A Halloween ThursPuz, just as M&A hoped for. With puzgrid crosses, to ward off any extra monsters.
And 13 weejects. Perfect. Good bad luck. staff pick: BIT, in honor of them puzgrid Jaws. Nice weeject stacks in the NE & SW, btw.
Tho not quite OBVS, did get the first themer nailed down at PRI(DEMON)TH. And the primo revealer was pretty OBVS ... went down there and got it right away offa nuthin but its clue.
fave other thing: ORDONT. debut phrase. M&A went with OKDOIT, at first. HEK ... wrong, again, candy corn breath.
Speakin of first impressions gone wrong, M&A went with just plain CRESCENT, initially ... which added many extra nanoseconds to his NE corner deliberations.
Thanx for the monstrously good fun, and for gangin up on us, Ms. Sinclair darlin & Mr. Pasco dude. Liked it a lot.
Masked & Anonymo1U (s)
Happy Halloween ...
**gruntz**
... and boo! ...
**gruntz**
p.s.
OOoh! Just happened to think...
* The first line of "Monster Mash" = "I was working in the lab, late one night ..."
* 2-Down answer = *LAB*RAT.
* primo extra mic drop, xword folks.
* QED.
M&Also
Not too scary, as monsters go. First thing I heard this morning when I turned on the radio was MONSTER MASH.
The scary part was the SE. I mean, c'mon! DIP, WHAM, YEET? Three complete unknowns. NO WAY!
Weird solving experience. Overall, the puzzle was fun and fairly easy. The revealer was a gimme and I found the DEMON, GOLEM, and OGRE squares quickly. I knew the fourth monster would likely be in the NE somewhere. I dropped in CRESCENT at 22A, believing that to be the complete answer, as ROLL seemed (and seems) superfluous. I was staring at the intersection of HORS_ and TEA T_Y, believing that was the final rebus square, and tying to figure out how RA or ROLLE could be some kind of monster, but obviously neither fit at the end of HORS_. Knowing that the app will accept a rebus with only the first letter entered, and guessing that that square must start with E, I dropped the E in and got the happy music with only TEA TEY filled in. Very confusing moment. Could not understand what word/monster beginning with E was supposed to fit there. Stared at the “completed” puzzle for several minutes before I came here to learn that the rebus was at T – TROLL – and that the full answer at 22A was CRESCENT ROLL. I had the T in place so the app accepted it, meaning I “solved” the puzzle in the app, but it doesn’t feel like I finished it. Because the puzzle was “solved,” I didn’t have the opportunity to keep working and fix my error. Like I said - weird experience.
Me too for MONGOLia, but I already had ON to start 59-A, so it had to be on either TAPE or disk. It took me along time to think of GOLEM, so I was fumbling around and around.
I see now that Conrad had the same odd experience.
I wish the app creators would figure out how to handle rebuses. I gave up and revealed the puzzle. Golem never showed up as the properanswer. So many times I don’t know how they want to see the rebus.
Agree.
And I agree with RP that GOLEM is not a Halloween monster, and disagree (since this is OBVS a Halloween puzzle) that it was fair.
I loved a lot of this puzzle, but also thought it had some fatal flaws.
MANGO blini, but it's too long.
I had a lol moment when I got PRI(DEMON)TH. Any terminally online queer person knows this as a meme that circulated a few prides ago. Seeing it in the NYT is very funny.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/nation-world/philly-pride-demon-meme-2023-lauren-witzke-delaware-20230601.html
Same but it didn’t fill in the rebus automatically. I still have a 3 monster finish.
Got here late, as I had an early medical appointment. Now that I'm 80, the insurance companies say the doctor has to meet with me so that he can tell me that I may not need a colonoscopy, due to the chance that I'll die before a cancer would become troublesome. I'll get one anyway, thanks. Anyway, I'm posting after reading the previous comments.
My big poblem was havine SHOPPE and LAB RAT and deciding the way to go downhill fast was to SLalom, which would fit if the OM was part of a rebus. Then look, it crosses DESDEMONA, which also has an OM! I hadn't noticed yet that it was Halloween, so I thought maybe it was a meditation theme and was off and running -- in the wrong direction.
I finally got CRESCENT ROLL, which made sense out of TEATEY (so close to Tetley!) and it all fell into place. Well I did have to look up DAPHNE (blush).
I liked having both MANEET and MONET, now that I have learned to tell them apart.
Hardest thing for me was BOP as "catchy song." Charlie Parker was a great jazz artist, but I wouldn't call his music "catchy." I can't find the meaning clued in a dictionary.
Successfully wrestled this MONSTER into submission and like it a lot. Had the struggle that others did with GOLEM, and thought Rex would cry unfair on it--but, "Hey, Rexy, he likes it!"
I was close enough to remembering YEET from its last appearance that it helped me solve the SE.
My only problem with the revealer was the OBVS nature of it--is there another remotely as famous Halloween themed hit?
There was one long Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) today--6 letters: STROLL (begins with the S in 26A, HORSE, and ends in the next square to the NE--TROLL! :-) That's a bit of HDW cheating.
PERMIT me to finish now--OR DON'T
I KNOW YOU !
Yes this was a great theme, but for me it was ruined by all the names. It seemed like every other answer was a name, or was clued by a name. Me, over and over: "Not another @#$%& name!!" I'm pretty sure I've never seen this many. ELVIRA DESDEMONA EVERS NEVE BABERUTH TDBANK XACTO MONETS ARDEN CAPOTE DAPHNE MANET BERN OLIVER GENEVA HUEY MANCHA CECE KENOBI WHAM! And of course that's not mentioning MONSTER MASH cuz it's the revealer.
Lemons can be grown in the tropics, but they are not a characteristically "tropical" fruit. They're believed to have originated in sub-tropical northern India, and have been widely grown in the temperate and subtropical areas of the Mediterranean since the time of the Roman Empire. Turkey, a temperate zone country, is a major world producer of lemons, as are China and Argentina. So I think that clue was misleading at best.
Agree. Never heard or used ”obvs" have heard and used "obvi" many times. Ideate is a terrible non-word. Bruce Campbell is famous for horror movies, Neve Campbell is a famous actress who was in some horror movies. "I can see" does not give abundantly clear vibes, it's more equivocal. I did love the clue and the book "Moo Baa LaLaLa"
this was one of my favorite puzzles this year, mostly because of the way the theme played out it was like doing 2 puzzles. put in the revealer with no crosses then even tho i knew what to look for the monsters were very devilish to find. first one was OGRE and when i got over to 45A i knew it would have a monster so tried to fit MANGOGRENADE which sounds like a plausible drink made with pomegranate. i immediately loved the puzzle when the down cross got me to GOLEM. very last entry was DEMON because i knew DEI was right. OBVI was, well, obvi. im on discord every day and have never seen OBVS.
GOLEM??? sorry that ruined it for me. I was looking around here to put GHOST. I had them all except one and I thought somehow GHOST would be in the Mong/Mango area. I never did really find it. my last square was the P in PROPER and them the happy music went off, Like Conrad and Sam. shocked the hell out of me and then I saw "GOLEM" was magically entered into the rebus square. I think I only had the G and was going to go back to it.
That Anonymous 11:50 post is incorrect. It was Gollum in the books and in the movies - both the 1978 movie and the early aughts trilogy.
I had ‘OK DONT’ crossing with HEK. The LBGQT+ …just can’t keep up with it all.
So here's the thing. I blamed my complete bafflement this morning on wanting to be out of the house on the early side but having overslept and therefore not having enough time to give this puzzle my undivided attention. So I brought it to the park with me -- something I pretty much never do -- and looked at it there with no time constraints.
Alas -- the complete bafflement continued unabated...
I came here to discover that this is one of the most intricate rebus puzzles ever constructed -- definitely worthy of AHAS! and high fives -- but I don't think I ever had a real shot at solving it. If only I'd known that OBVS is an alternative to OBVI (which I thought was the only textspeak "obvious"), I might have gotten DESDEMONA -- and who knows what else might have followed?
So much in the grid that was Greek to me -- from TD BANK to PROGRESS BAR (Whazzat???). The thing about a rebus this challenging is that the surrounding fill has to be at least somewhat within your sphere of knowledge or at least familiarity -- and this wasn't. I applaud the skill that went into making the rebuses in this puzzle, but my gut reaction was closer to @Dr. A's than to anyone else's on the blog.
Obi Wan Kenobi having been a general during the Clone Wars is mentioned by Princess Leia in Star Wars (1977). I haven’t seen any of the later stuff either, but I knew this one.
I'm in my late 70s and solved it, but not without a long struggle. Very satisfying. Helped that I didn't put in Mongolian and knew Golem from LOTR.
I'm in my late 70s and solved it after a long struggle. Very satisfying. Remembered Golem from LOTR.
I’m was about to say the same thing. Too many names are out of our wheelhouse and impossible to just guess.
This puzzle slaps. One of my favorites in recent memory, and that construction team is simply exceptional- I am always, always happy to see a Sarah/Paolo puzzle.
I used the NYT app and got the congratulations with MONGPIRE crossing MANGONADE. I came here to figure what those things were. Boy was I surprised. I did figure out the rest of the rebuses. Weird.
Had "ok do it" for a while there
Great puzzle. Well done Sarah and Paulo
I’m 80, and it took me an hour to get it, but it was a worthy struggle. If you keep up with the times, texting abbrs, rap artists, and other current trivia, you have an advantages. Great puzzle!
NYT app showed this as completed without the rebuses. So disappointed!
Cool story bro
Golem. Easy, except I was trying to fit next to ROPER. As proper without name didn't feel right. And MANGONADE was accepted. Why?
Golem. Easy. But what's this about Jews not celebrating Halloween? I didn't learn that in Hebrew School!
The software seems not too picky about what you put in the rebus. I think that is because there are times where several different answers are allowed so instead of specifying a list they just check for a few letters.it would be better if they filled it with the designed answer after you solve.
Me too. I wanted to figure it out first!
One of the finest puzzles of 2024.
NO TROLL
DON’T ASK HER again, ICANSEE HER ONTAPE,
ELVIRA’s a TEN, a PROPER DEMON BABE.
--- OLIVER ARDEN
Another vote for OBVI rather than OBVS. Never seen that second one used, but the first one, all the time. Otherwise a really fun puzzle! I, too, was trying to figure out what kind of monster an "Olianemp" was, until I realized MANGONADE was actually MANGOLEMONADE. Either one seemed feasible!
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