Answers in bold.
I remember that Thursday (and Sunday) NYT puzzles often have a theme of some kind. E.g.: Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Gryffindor who founded Gryffindor House at Hogwarts / THU 6-13-19 / East African native / Sedgwick 1960s it girl / Layer of Italiian muffuletta sandwich / Country that lost quarter of its territory in 2011 / Dweller on Arabian peninsula Is such a theme the reason Thursday was relevant?
Was the Beatles song LOVEMEDO? Was that the correct xword answer?
Are you looking for an answer where we figure out why SUICIDE was a wrong answer and (some other word/words, LOVEMEDO or otherwise) was the correct answer? Do we have to guess the clue?
Was Shut Down the theme of the Thursday crossword?
Just an FYI (sorry), I PM’d eschrodinger to ask for answers/the solution. I am still curious!
Since no one’s been able to open the box and check on eschrodinger, I did some googling to find the answer. If the Beatles’ debut single is LOVEMEDO, then I suspect the puzzle was this one: Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Commemorative Yevtushenko poem / SUN 2-14-16 / Kirk Douglas Robert Wagner Gregory Peck for Frank Sinatra / Renders harmless as bull / Spectacularly disordered sort / Soldier from down under / Hit song title for Bob Marley Whitesnake Survivor / 1951 #1 Mario lanza hit / Foreign currency unit worth about third of dollar
(That’s from 2/14/2016.)
“Shut down” refers, per post 3639, “not [to] the clue.” Which seems to imply “but (maybe) to the answer.” But I’m darned if I can find an answer in looking over that puzz that relates to “shut” (down) or “shut down.” Let alone one that implies the wrong answer of “suicide.”
Anyone? IWANTTOBELIEVE there’s a good answer to this one.
This would be easier if I looked at the clues, but I gave up my NYTX subscription some time ago.
Answers in bold. Sorry I was unexpectedly out of cell phone range for awhile.
The guesses are all circling around the answer I was looking for. This is not based on a real crossword puzzle, but is based on a real “trick” of NYT Thursday puzzles. Spoilered below.
It was a rebus puzzle, where there were only 7 spaces, but “SHUTDOWN” was the answer because both “LOVEMEDO” and that answer had “DO” in a single square.
Sorry if it was too hard, and sorry for leaving you hanging.
Thanks for giving us the answer! Appreciate it. :
Who’s up next?
EDIT: now “SUICIDE” makes sense. ������♂️
I was afraid it would be too easy, so i tried to obscure it a little more, but maybe I overshot. The idea was that “End it” was the clue. “SUICIDE” was a possible answer with the right number of letters, but didn’t work with the crosses.
SHUT(do)WN crossed with LOVEME(do). Nice. The “down” in SHUTDOWN was a good obfuscator. 
nm
Sorry for the accidental bump; was reading through this and confused it with the currently active thread.