TUESDAY PUZZLE — Double, double toil and trouble / Fire burn and cauldron bubble! It doesn’t take an eye of newt to spot the timely trickery in today’s crossword puzzle, constructed by Jeff Chen and Bharati Hemmady in their first collaboration for The New York Times.
I say “timely” because the week of Halloween is upon us. And while not all of the creatures hidden in this grid are associated with the occult, they appear only during the spookiest of hours.
Today’s Theme
At 60-Across, we’re asked for a term that describes something [Like an untrustworthy business] — which, the revealer clue suggests, doubles as [a hint to the ends of 17-, 29-, 39- and 47-Across]. Note that while “ends” can refer to the last words of entries, it can also indicate fragments, as is the case here.
First, let’s solve the cited clues. They are as follows: [Staged fighting] at 17A is MOCK COMBAT. 29A’s [Extinct cousin of an elephant] is the WOOLLY MAMMOTH. The [Longtime N.F.L. all-star game] at 39A is known as the PRO BOWL. And an [Unethical marketing tactic] at 47A is the old BAIT-AND-SWITCH.
The revealer solves to FLY-BY-NIGHT. If we read this not as a figure of speech but as a literal description, we uncover a handful of nocturnal fliers hidden at the ends of the entries above: a “bat,” in “combat”; the “moth,” of “mammoth”; “owl,” in “bowl”; and “witch,” in “switch.”
Kudos to the constructors for the thematic nod at 8D, with [False Front], often used to describe untrustworthy businesses.
Tricky Clues
16A/51D. Colloquial clues solve to similarly informal entries. [A goose egg] is slang for “nothing,” which can also be expressed as NADA. In kind, [Cold, hard cash] is too brassy to solve to “money.” The answer is MOOLA.
67A. [Biology class?] ends in a question mark, which tells us that the answer will be some witty twist on whatever the clue seems to mean. In this case, “class” refers not to a classroom but to a taxonomic category, GENUS.
11D. Here, again, the question mark should give us pause. That said, no pause is implied by [Words said with reservation?] because those words are SAVE THE DATE.
25D. The [“Laughing” birds from Down Under] are KOOKABURRAS. As a plural, this term is a Times Crossword debut. The singular kookaburra, however, has appeared twice.
46D. While the above debut entry stands out for its uniqueness, this term, which is also a Times debut, stands out for how inconspicuous it is. [Tougher, in a way, as a bike course] describes HILLIER territory.
Constructor Notes
Bharati Hemmady: I knew this theme would fly, but I also knew better than to fly solo. Getting a theme off the ground is one thing; keeping it airborne all the way to the finish line is quite another! I needed an ace pilot like Jeff Chen at the controls to help me navigate the turbulence and bring this puzzle in for a safe landing at The New York Times.
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