WSJ (Contest) Grid: 20 minutes; Meta: 15 more 
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Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Order Must Be Restored” — Conrad’s writeup
This week we’re looking for a four-letter word. There were four theme entries:
- BABYEINSTEIN: Multimedia brand found in nurseries
- GRANDPAJOE: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” character
- MATCHPOINT: Wimbledon is won on it
- ULTIMATEXMEN: Marvel comic book series from 2001 to 2009
There were four two-word themers. It took me a while to find the thread, and then I wrote the first letters of each word in my notes: BE, GJ, MP, and UX. All four pairs were separated by two letters in the alphabet, and those letters matched another grid entry:
WSJ Contest – 06.13.2025
- TAPE (Alternative to a vinyl record) -> B[CD]E
- WHATUP (Casual greeting) -> G[HI]J
- IXNAY (“I’ll pass on that”) -> M[NO]P
- NISSAN (GM rival) -> U[VW]X
The mapped entries spell our contest solution TWIN. The mapped entries follow the themer order, which is a nice touch. Twin doesn’t provide much of a click for me: it doesn’t tie back to the title, themers, or mechanism very well. I certainly could be missing something. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
At first I thought TWIN was an intermediary themer as T-W is separated by UV, but didn’t follow the format and couldn’t find a corresponding entry. Decided to submit and assumed it was just something like twin = 2 as in the themer length, or that the 2-letter themers were “twins” of the other entries in matching the clues. Shrug.
Didn’t see the mechanism. Title led me down a reordering/anagram rabbit hole. Also the center answer WARTIME made me think different wars or weapons might be hidden in the grid that required reordering. I’ll be interested to hear if the title had more nuance to it.
I went down the rabbit hole of thinking that “turn on a dime” was the key (splitting it up seemed ODD) and was sure X for TEN had some part in the solution.
ORDER MUST BE RESTORED is a catchphrase of the World Warcraft game. Having WARTIME in the center seemed to indicate we were looking for clues tied to that game. I gave up at that point because I have never played video games (other than Pong one drunken night in college) or their virtual counterparts.
To be honest, the actual solution is kinda ho-hum. And JAG is a rival of GM too.
TWIN as in, two of them snuggled in there together between the two theme letters. Fraternal, not identical.
I thought the title was a hint about the B CD E trick.
A fun puzzle Matt. You stumped me (again) but a clever mechanism well within reach. Thank you for all the puzzly amusement you provide us.
You’re welcome, Doc!
I literally (yes, it’s not hyperbole) realized the path to solve this in the middle of the night. Your mind goes to strange places, and I realized the CD, HI, NO, VW connections were the key. I also vaguely remembered TAPE and NISSAN, so I was halfway there when I woke up.
I got bogged down by the last across answer – EYE. It had me converting it to the letter “I” and looking aimlessly at all the “I’s” in the puzzle to no avail.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 2 stars
The title and hint were too vague to make sense of anything.
Did you notice that the initials of the eight theme words are in alphabetical order? B-E-G-J-M-P-U-X. That can’t be a coincidence.
It was noted on the Muggles blog that Order Restored, besides giving us the metanism, was also the same two letters apart O pq R – and that those letters, mirror images, are the only “twins” in the alphabet.
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I think being alphabetically adjacent is part of this definition of “twins.” Alphabetically conjoined twins?