WSJ (Contest) Grid: 20 minutes; Meta: 5 more 
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Patrick Berry’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Go-Betweens” — Conrad’s writeup
This week we’re looking for some go-betweens. There were six theme entries, each containing the letters G and O, with others in between:
WSJ Contest – 05.09.2025
- BAN(G)INT(O): [Collide with]
- DAN(G)ERM(O)USE: [Grammy-winning musician named for an animated TV series of the 1980s]
- STA(G)ED(O)VE: [Sought support from the fans?]
- THE(G)IA(O)UR: [Byron poem subtitled “A Fragment of a Turkish Tale”]
- RUNNIN(G)RI(O)T: [Unconstrained]
- VER(G)ES(O)N: [Comes close to]
The in-between letters spell our contest solution INTERMEDIARIES. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
Got pulled down a different path with the two prime themers
DANGER FIELD MOUSE
RUNNING QUIET RIOT
FIELD ???? QUIET
GENERAL was the best intermediary I could come up with…alas no GO this time.
I went down the same garden path, but with FIELD and RACE. 🤷♂️
This was a fun one! Thanks Patrick!
I don’t understand the clue “Sought support from fans.”
I absolutely never get the contest answer, but I did this time, quickly.
I needed someone to explain that one too.
Stage diving is jumping off the stage while performing and having the audience catch you.
You don’t want to land on the hard floor, so you hope for ‘support from the fans’ by catching you.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 2 stars
Very strange!
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 5 stars
That clue did not make any sense to me, either.
However, I loved the meta. It took me a while to think about the GO betweens in the right way. I thought it exceptionally clever.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
I got so confused by that clue about fans that I almost gave up on the meta. I kept reading the answer as STAGED OVE thinking maybe we had to add something. Luckily I took another gander later in the day and saw DOVE as the past tense of dive. I got the G-O gimmick soon after. I always like Patrick Berry puzzles, altho I admit some of his Variety puzzles are well beyond my abilities. It must have been challenging to find examples to spell out the solution without resorting to gibberish.
I thought that this was a great construction, 5 stars…and I say that despite the fact that I totally whiffed on it. Careful parsing of every word in the title would / should have done it, but I just flat neglected to do it.
Best i could figure was that a stage dove was some sort of avian emissary for peace sent by the performers to calm down the audience. But knowing how utterly absurd and ridiculous that reading was, I just gave up that stage and dove into another puzzle.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
I enjoyed the puzzle but these comments are even more entertaining.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this meta. Brilliant, Patrick!
Yeah! I got this one! I’m usually terrible at these — I get them only maybe 3-4 times a year. :) The biggest challenge was 40A, never heard of the poem.