Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “In the Country” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for something found in the country. There were seven long paired horizontal entries, but not all of them were thematic. I spotted 8a (OCTET), clued as “Largish combo (and a hint to the number of letters in each country that you’ll need).” I misinterpreted that hint, and thought I needed eight entries. I quickly found five and then ran out of steam. I spotted GRASS and realized that I misinterpreted OCTET. Five of the seven long paired acrosses contained an eight-letter country with one middle letter left over:
WSJ Contest Solution – 04.14.24
- AS(SURIN[G]AME)NDS
- AR(DO[R]MINICA)MPS
- CRE(MON[A]GOLIA)TH
- AS(PARAGU[S]AY)RES
- HA(DJI[S]BOUTI)QUE
The middle letters spell our contest solution GRASS, which is something found in the country. This one threw me off a bit because KNEEBONE/SHEENA and ETRADE/EXPOSURE weren’t part of the meta, and yet they fit the two long across themer pattern. Mike is normally extremely precise in his meta construction, but I also I misread OCTET’s clue at first. And the meta was very fair. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Glad it was a nice quick one because I didn’t get a chance to look at it till ~10pm
same on both counts
The OCTET hint was helpful for me, as I initially saw MON[A]GOLIA as MONA[G]O for the country Monaco.
Nice one. But I’m surprised he included the hint with OCTET at all. I don’t think it helps solve the meta. Knowing the countries are 8 letters long didn’t help me at all — you either see the countries, or you don’t. But I liked it!
It helped me immensely, especially since I googled “Eight letter countries” and there are only 25-30 of them. Not familiar with the last one and hardly familiar with the first one.
I also play an online geography game called Worldle and yesterday’s country was DJIBOUTI. I didn’t get it before I ran out of guesses.
Today’s country was China. In the bonus round it asked me to name its 16 neighbors. I got 14 (which agrees with what Wikipedia says are its neighbors), bit have no idea what the other two could be. I tried maritime neighbors, but it did no accept any of them.
They’ve done China before.
I got most of the neighbors. I should have gotten them all, since I had already played that one.
It looks to me like Wikipedia omits two small neighbors, which China considers “special administrative regions.”
It seemed like the grid design made the puzzle kind of “choppy.” Maybe this is a function of the theme(s) – not sure. I never really got stuck anywhere, but somehow, the puzzle felt a little disjointed – like I was solving a bunch of mini-puzzles. I didn’t care for that.
Other than the fact that GRASS is found in cities and suburbs as well as in the country, so to speak, I thought this was a fun, well-constructed meta. DJI in HADJI and BOUTI in BOUTIQUE jumped right out at me although I wasn’t sure for a while what the next step would be.
I was kind of disappointed that it was “just” GRASS.
The OCTET hint helped me spot the five countries. I especially liked that they were split different ways— 5/3, 3/5, 4/4 . . .
When I first finished the grid, I spotted PARA and thought we were looking for abbreviations. I didn’t see any others, so I set it aside for a bit. When I came back to it, the GU[S]AY jumped out at me.
Still, in my first highlighting of the theme answers, I missed DO[R] MINICA, leaving me with a nonsense meta answer of GASS. I had made a mistake in the grid—MINItAMPS are not a thing. I’d not heard of MINICAMPS, though it makes sense; tABLE as a “Reception choice” makes sense if you imagine “reception” with “wedding” preceding it.
I agree with Simon and David that GRASS is a bit meh as a meta answer, in no small part because it is found in places other than the country.
But I hate to be churlish about a meta that I actually solved, and solved quickly. Overall, I liked it.
My in on this one was SURINAME, and actually, that was quite by chance. I was originally guessing that there were words in the grid that contained anagrammed world capitals, which one could then associate with a country. As I was eyeballing ASSURING, I realized that AME (in AMEnds) was adjacent. Dropping down two rows, I saw DOMINICA for the first time and I knew I had it. With the extra letter from each of GR, I guessed it was going to be grass, but — of course, had to verify that was it.
Naturally, with the way I got into it, DJIBOUTI was my last find, and my favorite.
I was staring at QUITO hiding in BOUTIQUE when I spotted PARAGUAY.
I also thought “GRASS” was a bit short.
How about “grass spaces”. There’s a black(empty) space following each of the meta letters.
Just a thought…