Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “S is for Solving” — Conrad’s writeup.
This we’re looking for an eight-letter word that I hope sums up your solving experience. There were four long two-word theme entries. Based on the title: I knew to look for S’s in the grid (and there were lots). I noticed each paired theme word started with S, followed by another matching letter:
- (SW)ORD(SW)ALLOWERS: [Magicians David Blaine and Johnny Strange, at times]
- (ST)AINLESS(ST)EEL: [Material in a pan]
- (SL)IPPERY(SL)OPES: [Logicians warn of them]
- (SP)ECTATOR(SP)ORTS: [Fun for fans]
I had four pairs of SW, ST, SL, and SP. I returned to the grid and noticed eight three-letter entires with those two letters plus a third:
WSJ Contest – 10.06.2024
- 10d: S[E]W
- 20a: [S]SW
- 22a: [C]ST
- 23d: S[A]T
- 38a: [P]SL
- 44d: SP[A]
- 50a: [D]SL
- 57a: [E]SP
The third letter of the mapped entries spell our contest solution ESCAPADE. It was a minor bummer that seven of the eight mapped entries were symmetric, with the asymmetric SEW as the outlier. I’ve deducted one imaginary meta style point from my writeup. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
My answer was SUPERIOR. Under the S in SWORD is S. Under the S in SWALLOWER is U. Under the S in STAINLESS is P.
Under second S in STAINLESS is E.
Now, we need R and I, but under S in SPECTATOR is O, and just to the right under the S in SPORTS we have the R.
Figuring that the answer had to start with S, I had SUPE__IR. Eight letters and starting with S. I simply concluded that I just hadn’t managed to find the missing R and I, but they must be there somewhere.
Oh well. I understand the solution and grudgingly admit it starts with “ES.” Another good puzzle which I enjoyed nonetheless.
Also, consistent with the hint, I did feel SUPERIOR which summed up my solving experience when I submitted my answer.
Note—In my first post, I meant to write RI as the missing letters, and the last two letters as OR.
i went down multiple rabbit holes in this one. i glommed onto the digraphs early on and spotted the four conveniently symmetric tlas that end in those digraphs pretty quickly… but then it all came apart
– do we need to do a letter swap with the 3rd lettern in each tla?
– do we need to know what “s is for” in each tla?
– do we need to index the tlas into each theme entry somehow?
it wasn’t until late in the day and many scrap pieces of paper later that i realized the psl in the center was directing us to look for more 3-letter entries. the payoff ended up feeling… underwhelming somehow? not that i’m one to speak, because i definitely can’t make a puzzle to save my life and matt is an absolute master, but i deducted many style points on this one — not my cup of overpriced latte
Finally got this after multiple revisits. I knew PSL was a hint, being an odd answer in the center of the grid, and it finally all clicked. Still, it felt a bit unsatisfying that the letter of the three to choose could be any one of them, plus the title of the puzzle didn’t seem to tie in neatly to what was required to solve.
I had the same eight three letter words except I misread my handwriting and saw EST instead of CST. Dumb. Plus the order was wrong. I couldn’t make a word out of it. And S is for SOLVING didn’t make any sense to me considering we were looking for two letters, not one. I submitted PLEASANT which in my case didn’t exactly fit my “solving experience.”
Not too long ago, some puzzles in pdf started to cut off the very bottom in printing, although the complete puzzle was still visible on-screen in pdf. I resolved it, as I’d done long before, by unchecking a box to choose page size by pdf size. (In all cases, I go to puzzle, choose pdf, ask to print, and see a choice of opening in the browser, opening in a pdf reader, and saving. I choose to open in the pdf reader and from there File, Print. That gets me to options such as unchecking the box I mentioned before printing. That choice sticks, thankfully, on subsequent days.)
I finally got around to checking pdf sizes in the reader (File, Properties). Those that open in Scraper are the expected letter size. So are NYT puzzles in standard layout. But NYT puzzles in “newspaper layout” are 5.70 x 8.77, and WSJ puzzles are a slightly different but similarly odd size. Oh, well. At least that accounts for the printing problem.
OPART had me convinced that I needed to fill in all the S squares to create either an artful depiction of the answer…or better yet a QR code. (I should have my congratulatory cocktail after solving, not before.)
The detour I found (and I wonder if this we intentional) is that after identifying the four letter pairs (SW/SL/ST/SP), and finding my first 4 3-letter grid entries, I thin found 4 4-letter grid entries containing those letter pairs: SHOW, STAR, SLED, SPOT. They wound up not being meta-related, and then I went back and found more 3-ltter entries.
Puzzle title “S Is for Solving” had the I in “is” capitalized and not the F in ”for” so rather than following the 2nd letter and a mental leap to find the intended triples, I focused on the 5th letter of each half of the 4 main entries since “solving” has an I as its 5th letter. The resulting 8 letters anagram to SEPALOID, and I felt like I was plucking petals from a plant, alas, she (the meta) loves me not this week.