WSJ Contest – Friday, October 28, 2016

Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Three of a Kind”—Dave Sullivan’s write-up

WSJ Contest – 10/28/16 – “Three of a Kind”

So my good friends the asterisks are back this week, serving again to denote the four theme entries, but there is an additional theme entry without an asterisk that we are in search of this week. Here are the four identified theme entries:

• 17a. [*”Here’s what I think’ll happen…”], PREDICTION – I wondered why the shorter [*Guess] wasn’t used to clue this entry and put that in my meta memory bank
• 55a. [*It’s capital is Baku], AZERBAIJAN – we believe that one of Matt’s other sites, xwordcontest.com, was hacked by Azerbaijanis once. Luckily they were only holding out for the pen and notepad set that Matt awards his weekly winners.
• 11d. [*Shakespearean title character], CLEOPATRA – here, I started to wonder if her co-title character (Antony) would be important to the meta. A couple of clues below for a co-author and a co-star sent me a bit further down that road.
• 33d. [*Bronx-born judge], SOTOMAYOR – she is one of eight justices now, but along with Ruth and Elena, one of three female justices, which called to mind the puzzle title.

Looking more carefully at the other clues, we have five that aren’t starred, but have an enumeration following them in parentheses. These are:

• 15a. [Island visited on “The Brady Bunch” (9)], OAHU – I could only remember this episode when they went to Ohio’s King’s Island amusement park
• 24a. [“Over the Rainbow” singer (7)], DOROTHY – the more recent cover by israel Kamakawiwo’Ole has become almost as famous
• 37a. [“The Elements of Style” co-author (118)], WHITE – as in E.B.
• 41a. [Co-star of 1995’s “Nine Months” (12)], GRANT – as in Hugh.
• 48d. [Sydney who knew his zodiac signs (12)], OMARR – a rather oddly-worded clue that made me a bit suspicious

So my first assumption was my missing theme entry would be paired with one of these five other clues and I needed to match four of them with the theme entries that I did know about. My first step down the meta path was to recognize that a rainbow has seven colors (including RED), which might explain the seven in parentheses after that clue. Here are the others:

• The cast of “The Brady Bunch” has 9 (regular) actors, including JAN
• There are 118 known elements in the Periodic Table (I bet if joon did this puzzle, that was his entry into the meta solution!)
• There are 12 months in a year, including MAY
• There are 12 signs in the zodiac, including LEO

Gordon Sumner, whose real name contains no elements

Next I had to pair these with each theme entry, taking into account the “Three of a Kind” title. Would three of each set lead me to an entry? This didn’t seem likely. How about finding in each set a member that has three letters? These are highlighted in each entry above, leaving a three-letter element. TIN came to mind, and I found it (appropriately) hidden in the center down, 28d. STING, our meta solution.

A really nice meta–Matt had to find sets where there was only one three-letter member and find a way to include them in clues for entries unrelated to the set. My only nit is that the clues refer sometimes to the collective set (“The Brady Bunch,” rainbow and zodiac) and other times to the individual member names (months and elements, although each is at least pluralized). I had a couple of missteps in the fill–choosing GOT OVER before GOT PAST and SEETHING for FROTHING–but both were quickly corrected with the crossings. SHIITAKE is such an interesting spelling, I had an initial idea that would be our meta solution. SUNSHINE was another possible entry, given its connection to representing all the colors of the rainbow, but I have learned not to trust my initial solutions without taking all the meta data into account.