NYT Crossword Answers for Oct. 6, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

SUNDAY PUZZLE — The New York Times Crossword gets harder every day of the week through Saturday. On Sundays, though, we face off against a giant 21×21 grid that’s roughly on par with a Wednesday in terms of difficulty.

Daunting as they seem at first glance, Sunday puzzles are soft at heart, and their themes expansive. I love the sense of achievement I feel after solving a Sunday puzzle — and not just because it’s usually the only thing I accomplish between waking up and going back to sleep that day.

John Kugelman, a software engineer and musician from Gainesville, Va., constructed today’s crossword, and it has something of an academic theme. The puzzle is a delightful solve in any format, but you’ll get an extra kick — bonus marks, one might say — if you nab the print edition.

Today’s Theme

Each of the seven themed clues in today’s puzzle has a grammatical error (made clear by underlining, which we’ve omitted here). The entries represent a teacher’s corrections to these errors, in the form of common phrases. At 22A, for instance, we have [Mrs. B you’ll die when you hear what happened to “me” this summer.] The word “me” is underlined because it doesn’t need to be between quotation marks — and that’s exactly what the entry, DON’T QUOTE ME ON THIS, points out.

Another example, at 37A: [So we’re at the convenience store and WOW I find a 5$ dollar bill on the floor]. The issue here is the formatting of “5$ dollar,” which our imagined teacher wittily addresses by saying YOUR MONEY’S NO GOOD HERE.