Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Line of Work”—Laura’s review
This week we’re looking for an occupation.
WSJ Contest – 4.17.20 – Solution
No stand-out themers here, but there is that center long entry, which is likely important, and also it is important that in the last few weeks there are now 22 million people in the US who are newly
- [36a: Unemployed, euphemistically]: BETWEEN JOBS
With that central entry, and the big hint right at the start …
- [1a: Company whose co-founder sold his VW minibus for startup cash]: APPLE (i.e. Steve Jobs)
… it didn’t take long before I saw the repeated letters of STEVE in the grid, and noticed that there were letters “between Jobs”: APP DEV ELO PER — or, app developer, which is an occupation, and our answer. On the subject of Steve Jobs selling his VW minibus, family lore has it that my father-in-law, who was a research scientist at Stanford in the 1980s, bought a Colt Vista from a guy who worked for Steve Wozniak (the other Steve who founded Apple).
Speaking of Apple, this is pretty good:
Great series of aha’s on this one. Finally got the last one when I thought, why TEVERE instead of SEVERE?
Aw man, I thought I had this one. I sent in COOK because Tim Cook was CEO of Apple in between Steve Jobs’s times in that position.
Great answer!
No he wasn’t. There were multiple CEOs between Jobs’ stints at Apple (and Jobs was never the CEO the first time), but Cook was not one of them. Cook became CEO when Jobs passed away.
Well, I don’t know how vehemently I want to defend my wrong answer, but Wikipedia says “On January 14, 2009, Jobs . . announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who previously acted as CEO in Jobs’s 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple.”
Liked this one from Mike! Meanwhile, Matt’s continues to elude me this week…
Mike, you are amazing! I thank you and the other writers who bring us so much entertainment each week. I just can’t imagine you can put together something so clever every time!!
Well, I didn’t get this one… and guess what I do for a living…
With “Between Jobs” I was trying to figure out what Spindler, Sculley, and Amelio had to do with it.
I thought “inside job” would have been better than “between jobs”, because the answer parts were INSIDE the word “STEVE”.