Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “You Can Say That Again” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a fitting four-letter word. There were four long theme entries:
- BUYANDBUY: [Go wild at the mall?]
- MOOREANDMOORE: [Mandy together with Demi in a new movie?]
- THREWANDTHREW: [Practiced pitching for hours?]
- SEWANDSEW: [Work hard, like Betsy Ross did?]
I went down a brief B and B, M&M, TNT, and S&S detour. Which made perfect sense in mind, so I ran down that doomed rabbit hole for quite a while.
You’re probably wondering: what is S&S? That is the iconic S&S restaurant in Inman Square, Cambridge. I lived in a two bedroom apartment on Marcella Street in East Cambridge in the mid 1990s and we would walk there for brunch on weekends all the time. Back in a not-so distant time when recent college grads could live in places like East Cambridge before billionaires ruined the world.
Which is more information than you require about East Cambridge in the mid 1990s, but explains why I was stuck for as long as I was. I eventually realized that Matt wouldn’t require knowledge of an iconic local restaurant in a neighborhood in Cambridge, so I abandoned that rabbit hole and found the thread. Each full themer matched another grid entry’s clue*, here they are in matching grid order:
WSJ Contest Solution – 07.14.24
- 8d: ANYONE: [Some person at random]-> SEWANDSEW
- 9d: LIKEMAD: [With enthusiasm] -> THREWANDTHREW
- 36a: SOON: [In a while]: -> BUYANDBUY
- 43a: OFTENER: [With increasing frequency]: -> MOOREANDMOORE
The mapped entries spell our contest solution ALSO. Solvers: please share your thoughts in the comments. I ran out of time to find a meta-relevant song, so I’ll end with a recent song that I love.
*Edited to mention the theme entries matched other grid entries’ clues.
Got the Meta, but not all the clues connected correctly. Had S-O-F-A vs. S-O-L-A. So close.
Thanks for the explanation. This one eluded me. I was sure the answer would be a word that could also be doubled to create a phrase. But couldn’t find one. Thought maybe Half and Half.
I then descended into the perfect rabbit hole involving 32 Down: “Copy that” which gave us ROGER. I thought we might be looking for Aviation letters. Saw LIMA and ROMEO, and was sure I was on the right track. But it was a dead end. Submitted ECHO anyway since it is an Aviation letter. And “fit” the theme.
Frankly ALSO is a bit of a PFFT as a solution. And in my mind “So and So” refers to a specific person, unnamed, not just “anyone.”
I always thought of “So and So” as somewhat derogatory, so I had FIEND for that entry. I had the right entries for “By and By” (S) and “More and More” (O), but could not come up with anything for “Through and Through” (which to me means ‘completely’).
I also could not back-solve with the letters I did have: S O ? F, especially since I was taking them in theme order, not mapped entries order.
“Frankly ALSO is a bit of a PFFT as a solution.”
Why? The theme is X and Y phrases. Entirely logical.
“Through and through” equating to LIKE MAD seems a bit of a stretch. But for whatever reason (probably because I am not good at solving metas), I never thought to map the theme answers or the base phrases back onto the grid.
If the title was a hint to use the remapping technique, I missed it.
Every week, I look forward to doing the Friday WSJ puzzle, and when it’s one of Matt Gaffney’s, I have some hope that this will be the puzzle that ends my months-long slump of not getting the meta. Oh, well. Maybe next week.
Yes indeed. I was thinking the title was a hint to my Aviation idea. Since “Copy that” ties in so well with “You Can Say That Again.”
As I’ve said before, I love Matt Gaffney’s weekly New York Magazine puzzles and I wish they were included here on this forum. But his metas are often really tough to crack.
I got stuck in a respelling rabbit hole. Correcting the themers yielded an interesting letter transfer situation. The extra O in Moore&Moore slotted nicely into Sew&Sew, while the U from Buy&Buy sort of worked for Threw&Threw (if we accept the fast-food restaurant spelling as correct). The leftover letters comprised a pair of EWs. Four clues had the same phonetic sound, with the first letter of each spelling “TELL.” Tell&tell seemed to fit the puzzle’s theme, in the on-and-on sense.
I regret that I made the Moore&Moore–>OFTENER connection but failed to see the rest. Maybe next time!
Note that I made an edit to my post noting that themers matched other grid entries clues (not the entries themselves). That’s what I had in my brain, but not what I wrote.
Thank you to the various commenters who mentioned that to me.
Conrad,
The clue for OFTENER was [With increasing frequency].
You show Oftener.
That’s what I get for starting that writeup after 11 PM on Sunday.
Fixed, thanks, Garrett!
I first converted them all:
By and by
More and more
Through and Through
So and so
I had no problem connecting the first two to SOON and OFTENER.
I could not see anything that worked (in my mind) except WET — as in, “I got caught in the rain and now I’m soaked through and through!”
Never could figure-out what so and so tied to.
So now I have SOW_. I could not begin to think of an ending letter that made this a fitting four letter word.
I briefly entertained LIKEMAD, leaving me with SOL_. At this point I threw in the towel.
Now I see the word is not formed in grid order, nor in reverse grid order, by rather in this order: 4,3,1,2
Had I known that, I would have had _LSO, and that would have been easy to guess.
So, I correctly understood the underlying mechanism, but I was not on the constructor’s association wavelength.
Also, I think EVENTUALLY or INTIME would have been more apt than SOON, though SOON was still getable.
And I just noticed the answer is actually in grid order when looking at the associations themselves.
Meta licked…altogether so…over and out!
We found “here” in the puzzle as part of “adhere” and thought “Hear! Hear!” would fit the title very nicely. It seemed weak, but couldn’t think of anything else .