Grid: 15 minutes; Meta: 5 more
Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Party Places” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for something politicians do. There were five United States governor-themed entries:
- BRADLITTLE: [Governor of Idaho since 2019
- MIKEDEWINE: [Governor of Ohio since 2019]
- ERICHOLCOMB: [Governor of Indiana from 2017 to 2025]
- KEVINSTITT: [Governor of Oklahoma since 2019]
- KATIEHOBBS: [Governor of Arizona since 2023]
WSJ Contest – 02.09.2025
I figured that the next obvious meta step would be related to the states, or the state capitols. I worked the state capitol angle for a bit and found nothing. I returned to the more straightforward state angle and spotted ROKU: Oklahoma -> OK. I found the rabbit. Here are the matching state abbreviations in theme order:
- R(ID)A -> Idaho
- R(OH)R -> Ohio
- R(IN)G -> Indiana
- R(OK)U -> Oklahoma
- D(AZ)E -> Arizona
The final letters of the matching theme entries spell our contest solution ARGUE. Solvers, please share your thoughts.
And the Rs and D on the left side correspond to each governor’s party affiliation.
You missed one really neat thing about the meta, which is that the first letter of the 4 letter answer word reflects the political party of that governor. So the answers for the Republican governors all started with R, while the lone Democrat governor’s answer started with a D (DAZE).
I eventually found the correct metanism, but spent a lot of unproductive time examining the “years” in the Governor clues: “Since 2019”; “since 2023”; “2017 to 2025” Why include that information, if it wasn’t important?
My 2 guesses would be a) since one of the 5 wasn’t current, they had to put the years in for him so they made it so all 5 clues had symmetry, and b) for people doing this puzzle years from now, it puts some timeframe on it to assist future solvers (Although I don’t think MIKEPENCESAIGENERATEDPRESERVEDBRAINMATTER would fit in most puzzles for 36-A in the year 2164.)
I couldn’t have solve the meta if not for the Thursday NYT with a similar theme. Good construction.
Meanwhile the crossword itself is rather meh. Two roman numerals? And isn’t LAIC secular, instead of “not secular”?
Yes! The factual error in that LAIC clue really distracted me for a bit, as I hunted for other such errors elsewhere…
I would rather the clues have said e.g. [Governor since 2019] without mentioning the state.
That would’ve made it a good bit harder I think! Not necessarily a bad thing.
Fun puzzle. I originally thought maybe the answer was “Move to the Center” but ARGUE is much more apt in the present political climate. Btw, Conrad, Capitol with an o refers to a government building. States have capitals.
Me for 10 seconds after figuring it out: “Wait…these are politicians, not plumbers. They don’t AUGER….?!?!?”
I liked this one!! Well done Matt!!!