Crossword Nation : 2018-10-30 : Week 387 : HALLOWEEN HANGOUT

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Time: 23:48

We have another Halloween themed puzzle today with Liz Gorski's always enjoyable Crossword Nation. Liz refers to this puzzle as "fun-sized" in celebration of Halloween, which I'm pleased has the real meaning of the word "fun" rather than the con job that candy companies so ineptly tried to pull on us kids with their fun-sized candy bars. Sorry, there's nothing more fun about less candy and none of us fell for it for even a second.

Today's theme was "He's our favorite vampire!" with the answer, of course, DRACULA. As of maybe 20 years ago, I'm sure this was a fair generalization, but I would think that these days old Vlad is facing some stiff competition for favorite vampire. It's probably between him and Spike for me. It took me a while to grok the other theme clues, which were "Our Favorite Vampire" loves this "'Sweet Love' singer," "type of bar account," "exclamation that means 'Absolutely terrific!,'" "2017 hit song by Pink," "annual college football game in Arizona," and "these types of household spirits." The answers, of course, would respectively be ANITA BAKER, RUNNING TAB, FANTABULOUS, WHAT ABOUT US, FIESTA BOWL, and  TABLE WINES. I looked at this for a while wondering why Dracula likes Tab Cola, but finally got that it's a "bat" hanging upside down. INDEED it is. Unfortunately, there was no airport LOUNGE for me to complete the solve in, so maybe that's why I was off.

I could write a good deal more about this puzzle, but I'm falling asleep. To complete my write-up, I'll note that Liz invites us to connect the circled letters in alphabetical, which reveals, a BAT! (I think)


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