Marie Kelly’s (Really Mike) Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Chasing a Pitch”—Dave Sullivan’s write-up
WSJ Contest – “Chasing a Pitch” – 4/8/16
- 20a. [Kickboxing and kendo], COMBAT SPORTS
- 33a. [Armada action], SEA BATTLE
- 40a. [Three-under-par score on a hole], ALBATROSS – a term new to me, I’d only heard this referred to as a “double-eagle” in the past
- 51a. [Majorette, at times], BATON TWIRLER
There are a couple lovely 11-letter downs, Y CHROMOSOME and CLANDESTINE, which I held in reserve if looking for a bit more theme material. Then I noticed 66a. [Home appearances, or where to look for the contest answer], AT BATS. Hmmm, there sure are a lot of bats out there, aren’t there? What would it mean to find something “at” them? Well, how about the letter(s) that follow them in each theme entry? That gives us STRO for the four above, which leads one either to a brand of beer, or the Houston ASTROS baseball team.
Since I was a couple letters shy of the latter, I looked for the missing two theme entries. I found the first symmetrically placed to this final clue at 1a. [Site of fighting in early 1942], BATAAN. This gave me that leading A I was looking for. Then to find the final S, I noticed that that final entry also had the word BAT in it and was followed by the S I was looking for. So six theme entries in all, a six-letter team, each letter following the string BAT in those entries. Eureka!
Some other more or less interesting thoughts:
- Funny that 17a. [“Think nothing of it”], DE NADA, had no cue that the answer was in a different language. Do folks say that in common English parlance?
- Nice collection of baseball clues with [World Baseball Class uniform letters] for USA, catcher-cum-spy MOE Berg, [Ballpark quaff] for BEER, and finally, the numbers for Tommy Lasorda (TWO), Phil Rizzuto (TEN) and Pee Wee Reese (ONE). In fact, there were so many of these I thought they might have meta import, but no.
- I wonder if DOES IT for [Words after that and easy] qualifies a 6-letter partial? Does it?
This was a pretty quick meta solve, but very entertaining nevertheless.
My first entry for words that follow that and easy was: “isn’t it”. Was the “letter after bat” referenced by “chasing the pitch”?
Hi Shuka–I’m thinking the clue for ATBATS was probably more helpful than the title of this one, although to “chase” something could mean to follow it, as a “chaser” follows a drink or as in a police chase.