Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Listen to Your Customers” — Conrad’s writeup.
This we’re looking a well-known chain of stores. There were five numbered theme entries, here they are in order:
- Misbehave like never before (1): HIT NEW LOWS
- Ellen DeGeneres’s spouse (2) PORTIA DE ROSSI
- 2019 Lizzo single (3): TRUTH HURTS
- With 35-Down, noted compilation album of 1976 (4): OLE ELO
- Equipment for archers (5): BOWS AND ARROWS
Based on the title, I knew this would be a pronunciation-based meta. Not my favorite type of meta due to regional differences in pronunciation. But this one ended up being clear-cut (to me).
WSJ Contest – 11.17.2024
I spotted AVIS (Enterprise rival), and thought HERTZ, a homophone of HURTS. I had the rabbit: one word of each theme answer matched the clue of an entry with the same pronunciation:
- COSTCO (Chain with huge stores) -> LOWES/LOWS (1)
- OPEL (German automaker) -> PORCHE/PORTIA (2)
- AVIS -> (Enterprise rival) -> HERTZ/HURTS (3)
- LOREAL (Brand in the cosmetics aisle) -> OLAY/OLE (4)
- SONOS (Brand of speakers) -> BOSE/BOWS (5)
The first letters of the mapped entries spell COALS, a homophone of our contest answer KOHLS. Solvers: please share your thoughts. I’ll end with a non-thematic song featured in The Penguin. All my favorite cover songs radically deconstruct the original.
Enjoyable. Very similar solving mechanism to the puzzle from a few weeks ago, “Hear, Hear”
Yeah I got deja vu too.
Just about tired of these.
I believe 19A should be SIRE, and 10D CUSSES.
I agree.
Fixed, thanks!
Completely agree with Conrad’s comment about pronunciation-based metas and regional differences. Also agree that this was an enjoyable challenge, the toughest part for me was recognizing that the ‘customers’ could be customers of any BRAND, rather than just of chain stores.
I enjoyed this one!! Well done Matt!
I became tangled in an MG misdirect and settled on WHEELS (43D) as an answer to CAR for PORTIA. This led to CWALS, which sounded like SEA WALLS. So the chain has a marine related name? Hmmmm. Hours later, I saw the better clue that resulted in OPEL and the correct answer KOHLS.
I don’t know how many Canadians do the WSJ meta, but I wonder if the bookstore chain Coles (are they still around? I don’t go into Canada much in this post 9/11 world) would be accepted as correct from a .ca email address…
I saw/heard LOWS/LOWE’S and figured it was homophone time, plus the title was fairly literal. And the dreaded parenthetical numbers weren’t an issue. Pleasant solve leading to the answer, KOHL’S.
A bit easier than most. Not complaining! But I spent extra time wondering if the correct submitted answer is KOHL’S or KOHLS. Does the WSJ ever rule out people over minutiae like that?
I thought ARROWS sounded like EROS perfume and found my way to L’Oreal and COALS that way. Wasn’t sure about two homophones coming from the same clue but the “and” in BOWS AND ARROWS made me decide it was okay.
Based on the parenthetical numbers, I indexed into the new stores and got CPIES. Got stuck/fixated and never made my way out of the rabbit hole.l
Olay does not rhyme with Ole anywhere, except possibly in the US (admittedly a large and relevant exception). Likewise Portia and Porsche.
Boy am I not a fan of Matt’s homophone metas.