WSJ Contest — Friday, January 31, 2025

Grid: 15 minutes; Meta: 5 less 

 



Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Well-Rounded” — Conrad’s writeup.

This week Mike prompted, The answer to this week’s contest crossword is what we say to you if you get the contest answer. There were four theme entries:

  • MEGANFOX: [She played Jennifer in “Jennifer’s Body”]
  • EMILYLLOYD: [She played Cookie in “Cookie”]
  • JENAMALONE: [She played Rocket in “Sucker Punch”]
  • LAKEBELL: [She played Dr. Graham in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”]

I finished the themers before completing the gird and tried to find a signal. I found none, so I reflexively checked the final horizontal entry, where Mike often stashes an extra clue. There is was: CURVES, clued as “Real Women Have ___” (2002 America Ferrera movie and upcoming Broadway musical).

WSJ Contest – 02.02.2025

WSJ Contest – 02.02.2025

So how would I apply curves to the theme entries? I was stumped for a bit, and then noticed the rounded strokes in the theme letter entries and I had the rabbit:

  • ME(G)ANF(O)X -> GO
  • EMILYLL(O)Y(D) -> OD
  • (J)ENAMAL(O)NE -> JO
  • LAKE(B)ELL -> B

The curved letters spell our contest solution GOOD JOB. Solvers: please share your thoughts. I’m in London for work and didn’t have time to find a thematic song, so I’ll end with this new Lucy Dacus song that I love.

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6 Responses to WSJ Contest — Friday, January 31, 2025

  1. Simon says:

    Sure, Jan. Never in my wildest… lol.

    I got completely bamboozled by the presence of ALFA, BRAVO and PAPA in the grid and clues. So I assumed there might be a NATO alphabet theme. HAM SALAD confirmed that in my mind. A mix of radio alphabet terms. I found possible anagrams in the women’s names, where you’d have to change one letter. GANFO in Megan Fox could be TANGO if unscrambled. EMIL could be MIKE if you switch the L for a K; LAMA for LIMA in Jena Malone, etc. But what about CURVES? That puzzled me, so I tried curling the NATO names from the corners. DELAK could be DELTA. ROMEO barely visible at left end of EMILY. Ok, it made little sense. But you gotta admit the actual solution was a stretch too. I submitted KUDOS just because BRAVO had already been used. GOOD JOB, Conrad!

    • Seth Cohen says:

      Some general meta advice: First, if there are obvious theme answers, you should look there first. The entry into the meta will almost never involve three random words in the grid/clues. Second, beware of anagrams in the grid, especially if they’re scattered around in disparate places or not in a straight line (like DELAK): you’d be surprised how easy it is to find anagrams of whatever you want.

      I’ve done some stretchy metas, but this one wasn’t a stretch at all: clear themers, clear hint in the last across clue/answer logical steps the whole way. You just gotta get used to where to look!

      • Simon says:

        Thanks for the advice. But Curves did seem to indicate non-straight options. And as I said Ham Salad also seemed to imply looking for scrambled letters. Mike’s comment below was also apt in my case because I did solve on paper and I usually write my letters in non-caps, so a and e both have curves that could fit the theme so it wasn’t a clear-cut obvious meta at all.

      • Simon says:

        Also the repeated use of “she played” in the women’s clues suggested to me that we “play around” with the letters in their names. I appreciate your point of view. I am not defending my wrong choices, just explaining how I came to make them. And I left out a lot of other ones. :)

  2. Mike says:

    I can imagine people who solve on paper and use lower case complaining some. :)

    I originally wrote in GLENNCLOSE for “Cookie”; my 35-40 year dormant synapses on long-forgotten 80s movies had it confused with “Maxie”. (Thanks, Google!)

  3. Garrett says:

    I always solve on paper, in ink, using caps.

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