Two announcements:
I mentioned last week that today’s puzzle was going to be challenging. Hopefully it didn’t spook you too much! This Halloween puzzle featured five Down answers with a pair of monsters mashed together into rebus squares. The crossing Across answers are normal save for the one rebus square in each one, and the clues to the mashed answers hint at a movie title featuring the hybrid monster:
As an extra kicker, I threw in two symmetrical answers that hint at the theme (or at least the title): 20D: [Monster] is BEAST and 111D: [Mash] is CRUSH. Just a little tribute to Bobby Pickett.
This is an enlarged version of a Halloween 2014 puzzle from my old website Devil Cross. That one was a bit different in that it featured the actual names of movie monsters, like Dracula, the Blob, King Kong, and Godzilla, whereas today’s puzzle just features generic monster terms. As I found out, there aren’t enough easily recognizable movie monster names that would work for a large 21 x 21 puzzle. I would have loved to have tried a mash-up of XENOMORPH (the main alien from “Aliens”) and PENNYWISE (the clown from “It”). And by “loved,” I mean “tortured myself into freaky oblivion.”
Just so you know, next week’s puzzle features a meta. Good luck!
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