NYT Crossword Answers for Aug. 12, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

MONDAY PUZZLE — Shaun Phillips made his New York Times Crossword debut just two weeks ago. You might remember his puzzle, which appeared on a Wednesday, for its visual cleverness: The black squares formed the arm of a claw machine, which was also the theme.

Given the hundreds of submissions we receive each week, it might be surprising to see Mr. Phillips back so soon. But today’s theme suggests that he might actually like keeping us in a state of mild disbelief. Will he return with a third puzzle two weeks from now? Time will tell. And if he does, I will have foretold the time. Does that work? Moving on.

Today’s Theme

[The answers to the starred clues in this puzzle] (49D) are just MYTHS, right?

Either way, the folklore that shrouds the figures in this puzzle — SANTA CLAUS (53A) and the LOCH NESS MONSTER (46A) among them — is key to the wordplay at 32-Across: The phrase that means [“Seriously?!” … or what one might ask of the answers to starred clues in this puzzle?] is ARE YOU FOR REAL?

I learned that the TOOTH FAIRY (17A) wasn’t real after losing the last of my baby teeth, when I felt my mother slipping money under my pillow. Rather than outing my parents in the morning, I hid the cash and complained that I hadn’t received my usual gift. My mother, baffled by this news and unable to confess, was forced to hand me some more as a consolation.

Tricky Clues

19A. I blame the frequency illusion — the false sense of seeing something everywhere shortly after you first notice it — for the fact that, mere hours after learning that [Southern cornbread] was called PONE, I came across some in the pastry display of a local cafe.