WSJ Contest – Friday, July 1, 2016

 

Marie Kelly’s (Really Mike) Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “One of a Kind”—Dave Sullivan’s write-up

This week we’re in search of a famous entertainer. I wonder if it would be Cedric, or if you’re a fan of Portugal’s national football team, Cédric.

Again, there’s no confusion over what are our thematic entries, as each has an asterisk preceding its clue:

• 17a. [*Sure and more], ANTIPERSPIRANTS – a “masked capital” with the proper product name leading the clue
• 25a. [*Whiner who’s not a winner], SORE LOSER
• 36a. [*”Grey’s Anatomy” spinoff], PRIVATE PRACTICE – is this a new TV drama? I’ve never heard of it
• 46a. [*Pickle-making ingredients], DILL SEEDS – I guessed CUCUMBERS first.
• 58a. [*Lies low], GOES UNDERGROUND

Here the title was a lot of help, as well as knowing Marie’s (really editor Mike’s) penchant for metas related to letter frequencies in theme entries. So, taking the title literally, we are looking for letters that only appear once in each of the theme entries. Seeing that each entry was an odd number of letters, I paired up the letters found twice and was left with the “one of a kind” in each, namely ELVIS, indeed a famous entertainer.

I wish the title were a bit more obscure, it seemed to give too much away in my humble opinion. DEEP SIX for [Eliminate] was a nice entry to tie three of the five theme entries together. And though a fan of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide series, I had forgotten that their onboard computer was named EDDIE. And why not, since HAL was already taken?