Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Gift List” — Conrad’s writeup.
The Twelve Days of Christmas – By Xavier Romero-Frias
Feliz Navidad from Santiago Chile! I am spending the holidays here with my family. The Christmas Day weather outside is going to be a frightful 91 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius). We can see snow in the Andes mountains, so we’re technically enjoying a white Christmas.
This week we’re looking for a three-word title. I spotted step one immediately when I saw the clue for 1a (DEY): “Susan who played Laurie Partridge.” As in: a partridge in a pair tree. On the first day of Christmas Mike gave us a Twelve Days of Christmas-themed meta. Here are the twelve presents, in horizontal grid order:
WSJ Contest Solution – 12.24.23
- DEY: Susan who played Laurie Partridge (in a pear tree)
- EGGS: Future hawks or (Two turtle) doves
- CHICKENCOOP: Home for (Three French) hens
- KIWIS: New Zealand (Four calling) birds
- TORI: Mathematical (Five golden) rings
- HONKS: Sounds from (Six) geese (a-laying)
- ESSES: Silhouettes of (Seven) swans (a-swimming)
- HELP: Butlers and (Eight) maids (a-milking)
- ALTOS: Low-voiced (Nine) ladies (dancing)
- LIEGE: Feudal (Ten) lords (a-leaping)
- LIGHTPLANES: Some (Eleven) pipers (piping)
- STOOLS: Perches for (Twelve) drummers (drumming)
The mapped entries spell our contest solution DECK THE HALLS. Happy Holidays, everyone! Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Attribution for the Twelve Days of Christmas Image shown above: By Xavier Romero-Frias – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
I’m not sure now which answer keyed me in to “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” but I saw it pretty quickly.
I somehow had the idea that the prompt said to look for a three-letter word, and I missed the five gold rings in my initial markup of the grid, so I thought for a bit that the answer was a three-letter word for the missing gift. But once I reread the prompt, I saw what I’d missed. All told, it took about five or 10 minutes.
I’m particularly impressed that the gifts are in numerical order. Fun meta!
Wow! Of course I missed it as usual, but upon seeing the solve, I am also impressed.Very clever and in retrospect, getable.
I had a feeling I had seen this before.
The SE corner often provides a big hint, and this was no exception with 51D.
I missed that hint until I had half of the gifts, but I didn’t really need it.
Thank you, Conrad for your excellent summary. This was a very enjoyable meta. I was happy that it was a quick solve for this busy time of year.
Merry Christmas to all!
I got it with Yule as well. Thank goodness there are 12 days of Christmas (at least in my family) because it allows me extra time to get all those gifts I need to find. And Thanks to Santa Shenk for this one.
Well, I totally got this, and I could even hear the song in my head, but the title is Twelve Days of Christmas and that ain’t a three word title. !?
Twelve Days of Christmas and Deck The Halls are two different songs, I think.
you take the first letter of the entries clued with the “12 days” gifts. They spell out DECK THE HALLS.
The theme led to a rabbit hole with the 24 esses along with an ESSES clue. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find the correct path.