Emily Carroll’s New York Times puzzle – Sophia’s write-up

Happy Halloween everybody! We’ve bought a really spooky theme at the moment:

New York Times, 10 31 2022, By Emily Carroll

• 20a [Punctuation marks indicating irony] – SCARE QUOTES
• 36a [Binges on bad news, in modern slang] – DOOMSCROLLS
• 43a [Mail that cannot be delivered or returned] – DEAD LETTERS
• 59a [Hired pen … or, punnily, the author of 20-, 36- and 43-Across?] – GHOST WRITER

So in a nutshell, it’s a phrase with a Halloween-y phrase mixed with one thing that could possibly be written. A enjoyable re-parse!

I noticed whereas I used to be fixing that the phrases have been all eerie, however I didn’t see the writing connection till I bought to the revealer. I feel a part of this was as a result of DOOMSCROLLS makes use of “scrolls” as a verb, versus SCARE QUOTES and DEAD LETTERS the place they’re nouns. It does make DOOMSCROLLS the odd man out theme-wise, nevertheless it’s such a enjoyable colourful phrase that I don’t thoughts in any respect. I didn’t know the time period DEAD LETTERS, nevertheless it’s simple sufficient to guess from the clue.

It’s a really tight theme set, which might imply that the fill can endure resulting from lack of decisions. But this puzzle has nice two lengthy solutions that run by means of three totally different theme solutions in STEPSTOOL and NOT UP TO IT. The different lengthy solutions in HARPER LEE and IN ANY CASE are good too.

I ended up with a reasonably common Monday time, however that’s positively resulting from my data of each crosswordese and Game of Thrones.  When my mother solved at the moment’s puzzle, she bought actually caught on the ERSE/HODOR/ATHOS and needed to search for the crosses (she additionally refuses to say that EMO RAP is a factor). I feel that’s a good criticism, and there are just a few different locations (ASTOR/SNOOT and the ELAN/ESTD areas) that weren’t actually Monday easy. I’m curious if this puzzle would have run on a Monday if not for the vacation? But given how properly it ties in and the way sensible the theme is, I’m glad the staff made this alternative.