Grid: untimed; Meta: 20 minutes
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Why not?” — Conrad’s writeup.
This were looking for a seven-letter reason not to do something. I focused on the seven longest horizontal potential theme entries:
- PREMATURE: Occurring too soon
- AIRLESS: Stale smelling, perhaps
- ABDOMEN: Navel base?
- GRATEON: Bug
- PREPARE: Gear up
- UNCLEAN: Covered with filth
- GOODGOLLY: “Heavens!”
WSJ Contest – 09.29.2024
I pondered various thoughts and could not pull a signal from the theme entries. Reminding myself that Mike is literal in his metas: I focused on “Why not.” As in “Y not.” Meaning “No Y.” Then I spotted BELL(Y), which matched ABDOMEN’s clue: Navel base? I had the rabbit: each theme clue matched another grid entry with a Y added to the end:
- EARL(Y) -> Occurring too soon –
- MUST(Y) ->Stale smelling, perhaps
- BELL(Y) -> Navel base?
- ANNO(Y) -> Bug
- READ(Y) -> Gear up
- GRIM(Y) -> Covered with filth
- OHM(Y) -> “Heavens!”
The mapped letters spell our contest solution EMBARGO. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
I went about it the other way – looked for entries that would make words with y appended – MUSTy and GRIMy were right there! Only later did I realize the answers they corresponded to were the long acrosses. Loved the change from OHM to OH MY.
When I read the puzzle title, “Why Not?“, I thought about how many times parents get asked that question.
Kid: “Can I go to the movies tonight?”
Parent: “No.”
Kid: “Pleeeease??”
Parent: “No!”
Kid: “Why not?”
What seven letter word might be the parent’s response?
I looked at the long theme answers and came up with optional meanings for them (though they were not in the grid or clues):
PREMATURE = Before
AIRLESS = Empty
ABDOMEN = Cavity
GRATE ON = Annoy
PREPARE = Undertake
UNCLEAN = Soiled
GOOD GOLLY = Egad
The first letters spell the reason parents often tell their children not to do something: “BECAUSE!”
That’s cute!
+1 for alt-correct answer. Logic and humor combine for a winning submission.
no completed grid post for WSJ?
I understand how the actual solution was formulated, but I give Carolynchey a lot of credit for creative thinking.
She did have a good alternate solution, didn’t she?
Yes! Great alternate solution.
I got as far as identifying the seven words to start with (PREMATURE, etc.), but never got any further with the meta.
But I was kinda annoyed by the time I started trying to solve the meta. I don’t usually have any trouble filling in the grid in the WSJ Friday puzzles. And I zipped through this grid until I put SUMO in place of JUDO. (I should know better than that.) That meant I couldn’t see MOJO, which meant I couldn’t see PREMATURE. (That was compounded by my perpetual failure to remember URU as the abbreviation for Uruguay and having no idea who [Haines of “The View”] might be.)
Literal “why not” it is not.
With N O T appearing in three entries I tried to anagram the leftover letters ANGRAEE (7 letters) but it left me wanting.
Cool solve nonetheless.
Blimey! I got waylaid by seeing TATUM O’NEAL in the grid. That led me to look for other actors or famous people, hoping to find Susan for ANTON, Alec for BALDWIN, etc. Obvious dead end. I had the right seven themers and thought maybe we remove a Y, but never thought of adding a Y. I submitted INERTIA. Which is what I was feeling.
PS Hats off to Mike for a WONDERFUL/GREAT puzzle.
Really nice meta here, only complaint is the inelegance of six of seven meta clues having four letters and the last having three letters…wasted a good 30 minutes trying to find a definition of DERR(Y). Thanks Mike!
Never solved it, and the solution feels convoluted and backward to me.
With the title as a hint, I quickly found six entries that could form new words by adding Y. (No matter how many times I looked, I never found OH MY, which anomalously turns into a two-word phrase.) I then mapped those new words into matching clues and answers (because that’s the sort of thing you do in a meta) and took the first letters of those answers (because that’s also the sort of thing you do in a meta). And that produced gibberish, no matter what ordering scheme I tried, even anagramming. Adding the O from GRATE ON to get the seventh letter didn’t help. Adding a Y instead (based on the title) didn’t help. No other letter (I ran the alphabet) helped, either.
I thought the lone Y in the grid had to be relevant somehow, but no, that was just an inelegant red herring. ANTON(Y) and DERR(Y) were also red herrings.
Really, the complicated (though familiar) mechanism with the synonyms and mapping was almost entirely extraneous here. If I had ignored it entirely and just taken the first letters of the six (or seven, if I had found the seventh) changed words I started with, that, with a little fiddling, would have led to the meta answer. All the mapping contributes is to establish the order of those letters (and, if you insist, ruling out ANTONY and DERRY).
I’m afraid that WHY NOT was just too subtle for me. Maybe:
… and sometimes Y
as a title for this one.
I gathered from the title that “Why” was a homophone for “wye,” but adding that letter to answers in the grid just never occurred to me. Which is probably why I struggle with these metas so often.
I got stuck in a hole thinking the Derry and Antony were going to be used as well. I think had I stepped back I may have been able to see the the main across were the alternate definitions. But alas I did not and did not solve this meta.