Grid: 10 minutes; Meta: 5 more
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Water, Water, Everywhere” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a three-word body of water. There were no obvious theme entries, but 19a (CHEM, clued as Subj. in which water is H20) served as a hint: look for two H’s and an O. The grid yielded no signal so I checked the clues. I had the rabbit. 10 three-word clues: each word started with H, H, and O, respectively:
WSJ Contest – 04.25.2025
- TET: Hanoi holiday observance
- HELOISE: Helpful hint offerer
- EARED: Having hearing organs
- DRINK: Happy hour order
- ELECTRIC: Home heating option
- AORTA: Human heart outlet
- DOORMAT: Habitually humiliated one
- SHRIEKS: Haunted house outbursts
- EGG: Horton hatched one
- AAA: Highway help org.
The first letter of the mapped clues spell our contest solution THE DEAD SEA. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
What was with all the ATs in the grid?? I figured they had to be significant. I submitted THE ATLANTIC OCEAN since there were also a couple of final ICs, but since I didn’t have a cohesive narrative for the answer, I didn’t hold out much hope that I was correct.
I also saw all those ATs but later found the HHO clues.
Pretty easy and straightforward if you looked at the clues.
Exactly. Mike Shenk likes to use the clues.
I got hung up on finding the H-H-O squares in the puzzle then the water related entries (drink, spatat, atmos, oahu etc)…missed the cluing pattern. Oh, “well”
WELL done! I knew H2O had to be the mechanism, but I misread it as H to O and got sidetracked looking for that.
I did come up with THE DEAD SEA eventually as my answer, but from a different method. Does that count? I was thinking of THE SEVEN SEAS. I counted the C’s in the puzzle and noticed there were only 6 of them. I concluded that the seventh one was not there because it was DEAD. Hence The Dead Sea. (My rationale for this was backed up by the phrase “water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” A real thirst trap.
Anyone else notice all the types of water in the puzzle: WELL, DRINK, HEAD, TEAR, MAIN, SOUND, VAPOR, SPA, EAU, BAY, as well as OISE and TIBER rivers.
P.S. I just noticed too that my printed page of the crossword says PUZZLE ONTEST. No C! Is this just on mine?