NYT Crossword Answers for Oct. 21, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

MONDAY PUZZLE — If you’ve come to the Wordplay column directly after glancing at today’s crossword, don’t panic. This puzzle, constructed by Neil Padrick Wilson, is as Monday-friendly as they come, even though it doesn’t look that way. The grid is a little more open than one might expect for the top of the week — and I share your initial alarm at the number of longer entries Mr. Wilson managed to fit into his grid. But I can assure you that it’s an easy solve. I might even call it child’s play.

Today’s Theme

ELMER’S GLUE (58A) can be interpreted as the puzzle’s revealer in two senses. The first is literal, since the adhesive is [What a kid might use to hold] a PAPER PLATE (17A), COTTON BALLS (24A), MACARONI NOODLES (35A) and a PIPE CLEANER (47A) together. And 58-Across also represents the more figurative “glue,” as the revealer of any crossword serves to bring the elements of a theme together.

I’m far more interested in what the imagined “kid” of this puzzle plans to make with those crafting items. Are we thinking a classic necklace of MACARONI NOODLES? A fluffy animal mask for Halloween that uses the PAPER PLATE and the COTTON BALLS? A PIPE CLEANER stick figure? Whatever the finished product, I promise to react to it with feigned enthusiasm, as any responsible adult would.

Tricky Clues

29A. One generally kneels while being knighted — that’s what the movies tell me, anyway — so the [Direction to a newly knighted knight] is ARISE.

32A. I spent several minutes cycling through possible mononyms for all my immediate family members and extended relatives before realizing that the [Family member who usually goes by one name] referred to a PET.