Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Family Meeting” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for something parents should do. Mike provided an overt clue in the center across entry:
- MOMANDPOP: Initial owners of many a small store
I tried to find a signal in the long across entries and came up empty. Mike is normally literal in his clues, but that doesn’t necessarily make them easier to decode. That makes for a great meta.
I scurried in various directions on mom and pop, initial, owners, etc. I kept staring at the grid and found no signal, so I turned to the clues. One mistake I have made over the years while solving (and often failing to solve) metas was focusing on the grid and not the clues (when it mattered). It mattered this week.
EUTERPE stood out to me. Obscure crossword fill, which Mike isn’t known for, unless… it serves as part of the meta. It was clued as Muse of music (MOM), and I had the rabbit. There were seven crossing grid entries with three-letter mom or pop clues. Here are the MOMs:
WSJ Contest Solution – 08.18.24
- Magnani of movies: ANNA
- Meanings often missed: NUANCES
- Mount Olympus matriarch: HERA
- Merak or Mizar: STAR
- Muse of music: EUTERPE
- Merlin Olsen, memorably: LARAM
- Mined over matter: ORE
And here are the POPs:
- Puts on pounds: GETSFAT
- Prayer opening, perhaps: OLORD
- Pacific Ocean phenomenon: ELNINO
- Periods of prosperity: UPS
- Poured out, perhaps: EMPTIED
- Pea or peanut: LEGUME
- Popular office plant: FERN
The crossing MOM/POP grid entries spell our contest solution NURTURE. Another great meta by Mike. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
While I was unsuccessful in getting to the answer, this was a truly spectacular concept, and execution. To have the letters be the interlocks and in grid order and be a normal level of challenge crossword solve is just incredible. Bravo. Mount Olympus indeed. My favorite of the year.
There were three other letters where answers intersected each other – the L where EL NIÑO crossed O LORD, the A where HERA and ANNA intersected, and another L where LEGUME and L A RAM came together. I came out with LNURATLURE. Nurture jumped out at me and the remaining LAL anagrams to ALL. I tried to figure out why those other three letters should be omitted from the solution. I ended up submitting NURTURE ALL, though I suspected the actual answer was just NURTURE. I’d love to hear an explanation of why those extra three letters should be ignored.
Only the intersection of MOM and POP clued words count; intersections of POP and POP or MOM and MOM words are ignored. (This confused me too for a while before I figured that out.)
I noticed that too, except that the the third extra letter (the L of LEGUME and L A RAM) is a Mom & Pop crossing – so there would still be an extra L in the solution!
I also noticed the extra L in the solution, but it was clear that NURTLURE didn’t quite make sense. Still, it would have been better if 46A and 46D had both been moms or pops (although modern families can have those too!).
Fun puzzle.
Oops; I just noticed that the “L” in LEGUME/LARAM fits the POP-MOM intersection, so that idea is out.
Yes, the Legume/LARam crossing is a Mom&Pop crossing, so the extra L is a mistake in the construction.
Ahh, that makes sense. Although I was able to filter out the noise and see NURTURE, I did not understand the exceptions.
There’s only one way to pair them off with a one-to-one correspondence. Those are the seven to use.
I first tried to find MA and PA in the grid, after DONNER PASS above MANTA caught my eye. But I couldn’t make anything with that, so I scoured the clues for “ma’s” and “pa’s.” Again nothing. Then, I looked for clues that referenced parents. When that went nowhere, I abandoned the meta.
EUTERPE doesn’t strike me as a particularly obscure answer. I was moderately surprised to see GETS FAT, but hey, it happens (as I know too well).
It’s a clever meta that I wish I had figured out.
Cool puzzle. Love the process Mike created. I got sidetracked by the word “Initial” in the theme clue 33A. So I looked for places where M and P might cross or ‘meet’. Didn’t get me far. Submitted NURTURE anyway because it was the only word I could think of that fit the suggested answer without any issues.
I thought for sure mom and pop stores with “initials” was at the core. So DonnerPass = DP = the obscure DP World and GuiltyPlea = GP = GP Travel thus Parents should do “World Travel” not a bad fit even if Nurture (and Stop Helicoptering) would be better answers, lol