WSJ (Contest) Grid: 20 minutes; Meta: 15 more 
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Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Lab Notes” — Conrad’s writeup
The answer to this week’s contest crossword is a hit song of the 1960s. There were six starred theme entries:
WSJ Contest – 11.02.2025
17A: SERMONETTE – *Radio homily, perhaps
24A: METRONOMES – *Beat keepers
50A: TORMENTORS – *Cruel sorts
62A: REMOTENESS – *Timbuktu characteristic
3D: MORTENSEN – *Viggo of “Green Book”
35D STORMRENT – *Like skies in a tempest, poetically
Each themer contained the mashed-up word monster, leading to our contest solution MONSTER MASH. Delayed writeup due to a family wedding; I’ll fill in the blanks later.
I finally have time to come up for air, so I’m filling in the blanks now. Thank you Seth and Evan for pointing out that this is not anagramming. Mike doesn’t do that without a clear indicator. All of the letters of the themers are exclusively from the word MONSTER (they are mashed up). And TIL the term letter bank. Awesome!
The title is locked in with the opening lyrics of Monster Mash:
I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster, from his slab, began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise
Nice spooky puzzle by Mike, I enjoyed it. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
I enjoyed filling out this puzzle and got the solution pretty fast, especially since Mike had cited Monster MASH in his Thursday puzzle.
NGL – I kinda hated this one. The grid was annoyingly obtuse in spots and not worth finishing once you could see all the long answers had “Monster” anagrammed (or… MASHed!! Ha ha! Get it?!?!?) in them. Also, no rhyme or reason to the extra letters? Make a rebus out of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” or sumpin’ instead of using the most obvious Halloween song imaginable….
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
“extra letters”?? All the letters in the theme entries were solely M-O-N-S-T-E-R with no extras.
So, literally MONSTER Mash, yah?
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
Occasionally, a simple meta is a fun respite. Yeah, I get the questions about the extra letters and why the need for 6 theme answers when the 4 across would have sufficed.
Re the extra letters, two points:
First, try anagramming monsters, all you get is mentors. The extra letters were needed for multiple themers.
Second, all the extra letters were letters that were part of monsters. In fact, within the extra letters e-e-t-m-o-e-t-o-r-e-e-s-e-n-r-t, “monster” was mashed again. Pretty neat trick in my opinion. Count me among those who thought something sneaky, pageanty was maybe afoot.
Ultimately, given the constraints of this concept, Matt would have probably given us a more clever puzzle. His themers would have been funny, punny nonsense phrases. After all, these logical deduction puzzles are Matt’s forte. Mike’s forte is engineering; mapping the route to letters that spell the solution.
Question: When was the last time Mike employed logical deduction rather than letter-mapping as his metamism? I’ve only been doing these puzzles 3 years. I’ve never seen this approach from him. This was Mike dressed up as Matt. Trick or treat indeed!
Excellent points and great deeper analysis! Thanks for rebutting my venom so well. :)
Y’all: it’s not that MONSTER it’s anagrammed plus extra letters. It’s that all the themers are made from the letters in MONSTER, mashed up. Duplicates allowed.
Yes, and the term that puzzle constructors often use to describe this kind of pattern is “letter bank.”
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
Once I saw that the answer was a hit song of the 60s, I knew the answer was going to be “Monster Mash.” Once I filled in one themer it was confirmed. It’s nice not to wrack my brain for an entire weekend.
Try coming up with a letter bank six times with words of 9 and 10 letters in length for a word that is 7 letters long. It aint mashed potatoes.