WSJ (Contest) Grid: 20 minutes; Meta: a day 
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Patrick Berry’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Sending Letters” — Conrad’s writeup
This week we’re looking for an 11-letter two-word phrase. I noted DASH and DOT while solving the grid, both clued as Morse code symbol. Based on the title: that was not a coincidence. I know that DOT mapped to E and DASH mapped to T based on letter frequency, because I’m a nerd who loves that kind of stuff. And if I wasn’t that nerd: I would have Googled it. And EEE was the center horizontal entry. I knew I was on to something but still couldn’t lock down the meta, so I went to bed.
I woke up and decided to highlight E’s and T’s in the grid. I found them, all consecutively grouped in horizontal entries, with no other occurrences in the grid. That’s hard to do with the most commonly-used letters in the English alphabet. I had the rabbit: Patrick encoded morse code in the grid:
WSJ Contest – 08.03.2025
- R -> INCOMPL[ETE]: DOT DASH DOT
- A -> CH[ET]: DOT DASH
- D -> S[TEE]DS: DASH DOT DOT
- I -> S[EE]SAW: DOT DOT
- O -> SCO[TTT]UROW: DASH DASH DASH
- S -> [EEE]: DOT DOT DOT
- I -> INBR[EE]DING: DOT DOT
- G -> PLA[TTE]: DASH DASH DOT
- N -> KARA[TE]: DASH DOT
- A -> [ET]ON: DOT DASH
- L -> RACK[ETEE]RS: DOT DASH DOT DOT
The encoded letters spell our contest solution RADIO SIGNAL. Wow, what a meta! From a crossword construction standpoint: it would seem impossible to construct a grid that exclusively used consecutive E’s and T’s in horizontal entries to form a thematic phrase in morse code, but Patrick pulled it off. Masterful. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Exquisite meta. But even more exquisite is how pleasant the non-meta fills are. Very difficult to do since the letters E and T can’t be used elsewhere.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Brilliant puzzle! Thank you Patrick Berry!
For a few hours I was stumped. At first I was sure all those double letters were the key. I counted 11 entries with them. From STEEDS to SKYY. But I could not make sense of the letters they provided. So I then began looking for state Postal Codes in the longer entries. I found 11 of those (altho IN showed up three times) but then I spotted HI which I had overlooked, and I realized it wouldn’t work.
I put the puzzle away, took a nap, went up to the roof to watch the sunset, and when I got back the DOT and DASH popped out at me and I knew the solution had to be related to Morse Code. I know absolutely ZIP about Morse Code. So I looked up what the heck Dot and Dash mean and found E and T. And I was able to solve it pretty quickly afterward. RADIO SIGNAL.
Excellent meta from Patrick Berry. As E.T. might have said, RADIO HOME.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
Fun meta solve though I felt the E and T choice was a touch ambiguous.
The EEE was noticably central with DASH and DOT entries giving a strong Morse push. Tried all EEs as dashes and single Es as dots to get gibberish. Then noticed lots of Ts and fumbled around until the meta precipitated.
Was E/T frequency in English or “ET phone home” implied somewhere? Fwiw I’ll float a more satisfying alternate title: Elliott’s Transmission :)
It took me some time to get to the DOT and DASH, but once there I knew I was onto something because there were exactly 11 entries with those combinations. Then it was a matter of the translation to RADIO SIGNAL, but I let a website do that for me.
If you’ve ever done one of Patrick’s variety puzzles, you would know he’s got a great talent with words, so I’m not surprised he could fill the rest of the puzzle with words without ET combinations. This puzzle was so satisfying to unravel, but I almost got frustrated before the “aha” moment.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Amazing.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Great metas ride the tension of challenging to solve but with enough clues to get you there. 5 Stars! The triple EEE in the middle and the triple T in SCOTTTUROW got my spidey sense tingling. DOT and DASH turning out to be the way one would code E and T solidified things. Lovely, lovely puzzle!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
What hath God (or Patrick Berry) wrought?
A system that linked up the world in almost real time for more than a century, last used commercially in 1999. Although, the US Air Force trains ten people a year in the use of Morse Code – just in case…
Now we have emojis.
Good luck trying to make a meta out of those, Patrick.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
TT ET EEE T E ETE EETE EET ETEE
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
And if anyone here wants to practice your Morse Code, https://lcwo.net is a good place to start. This puzzle pushed me back to practicing for an upcoming ham radio contest.
As others have noted, this must have ben a very difficult puzzle to construct!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
I was confused by people discussing letter frequency, it wasn’t needed. In Morse code, the letter that is one single DASH is T. One single DOT is E.
Great puzzle. I didn’t learn it growing up or in the military, but as a former enjoyer of multi-level riddles like Biz Fantast, Clever Waste of Time, Notpron etc, I still had my cipher tools website bookmarked.