Wall Street Journal’s Crossword Meta Week — Jim Q’s and Conrad’s writeups
Something out of the ordinary to celebrate the 10th year that the Wall Street Journal has been publishing crosswords. Cool! Full details can be found here. I know many a solver who bristles at the idea of metas, and I’m hot and cold with them myself. But my curiosity is piqued. So let’s get into it.
MONDAY 9/15: “Small-Town Feel” by Matt Gaffney
Of course Matt’s name is pretty much synonymous with meta-crosswords for those are with his work, so who better to kick off this week? If you are unfamiliar with him, you can subscribe to his (frequently mind-bending) puzzles here, where the puzzles (published on Fridays) grow increasingly difficult throughout the month. Today’s is more reminiscent of a Week 1 challenge, which is fitting for a Monday.
For this puzzle, the solver is told that the answer is a major U.S. city.
WSJ • 9/15/25 • Mon • “Small-Town Feel” • Matt Gaffney • solution • 20250915
One strong hint that a meta might be relatively straightforward and depend solely on larger theme answers is when the fill is squeaky clean. For the most part, the more complicated the meta, the more difficult it is to fill. This is due to more constraints being placed on the grid. Today, however, the fill is about as clean as it gets for a meta, so let’s look at the longer answers only to start.
- LIBERAL ARTS
- LONI ANDERSON
- LATIN AMERICA
- LIQUID ASSET
All clued straightforwardly. And what do they all have in common? L.A. So… that has to be the answer, right? Los Angeles? That’s my guess anyway. It almost feels too easy, but I suspect there is probably something else in the puzzle that is going to make it part of the larger meta.
Nothing else about the puzzle jumps out at me for the moment. So for now, I’ll call it a day and assume I’m on the right track.
TUESDAY 9/16: “Beatboxing” by Peter Gordon
On with Day 2!
The hint today is that we are looking for a clue that summarizes the puzzle’s theme.
What’s the theme? I have no clue.
The answers that are the most appealing to analyze are the longer ones of course. And they are:
- ANDY BESHEAR
WSJ Contest – 09.16.2025
- (maybe) EYE DOCTOR
- (maybe) ROB LOWE
- BLOGORRHEA
- ARTIFICIAL
- (maybe) DITHERS
- (maybe) FREE PRESS
- EARTHQUAKES
I have the same attitude with meta crosswords as I do with the NYT Spelling Bee: If the answer doesn’t jump out at me immediately (like the pangram), I assume I’m never gonna get it. The thing is, I usually do get the pangram eventually- often by accident. But it’s frustrating… until it’s not.
I had to put this one away for two days after quite a few backsolving attempts- looking at clues that could possibly be open to multiple meanings. “Sore” perhaps (IRATE is also in the puzzle in addition to ACHY) ? Or “Prune”? Ooh.. “Broke bread”! That could be it! No? How bout “Laughing sound”? I see EAR and EYE and some shared letters between some of the themers, but nothing solid. How bout I give up. Smacked down and disheartened by a Tuesday puzzle.
Disheartened for sure. Maybe even (11-A) “Heartbroken.”
When I went back to it, that clue jumped out and the puzzle was solved right quick. For the four un-maybe themers in the list above, the word HEART (clear as day once you see it) is broken within the row.
- ANDY BESHEAR * TRE
- BLOGORRHEA * RTES
- ASHE * ARTIFICIAL
- LAH * EARTHQUAKES
So easy. How on earth did I miss it? And that’s how these things go.
Before I get BLOGORRHEA, I think I’ll stop there.
“Heartbroken” it is.
WEDNESDAY 9/17: “Last Name First” by Patrick Berry
Welp, based on how long it took me to get yesterday, I’m gonna kick the can to Conrad from here. Otherwise I may just ramble senselessly and wallow in self pity.
Hey everyone: this is Conrad, batting cleanup for Jim. Wednesday’s meta asks us to find a famous one-named person. There were four long theme entries:
- CHRISCOOPER: Star of “Matewan” and “Lone Star”
- JOSHGROBAN: Singer-songwriter who’s the subject of Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away”
- CHICKCOREA: Jazz pianist who played in Miles Davis’s band
- PEDROPASCAL: Actor whose breakout role was Oberyn Martell on “Game of Thrones”
WSJ Contest – 09.17.2025
I applied the title by reversing the names and had the meta pretty quickly. The reversed themers contained a word that mapped to another grid entry:
- COO[PERCH]RIS -> COD
- GRO[BANJOS]H -> HARPS
- CO[REACH]ICK -> EQUAL
- PA[SCALP]EDRO -> RESOLD
The mapped grid entries spell our contest solution CHER. On to Thursday!
THURSDAY 9/18: “Remainders” by Mike Shenk
Thursday’s meta asks us to look for a four-letter word. This puzzle was the trickiest for me this week. It took me a while to find a foothold, but I eventually spotted the rabbit. Mike gave us four 8-letter starred entries in Thursday’s puzzle:
- LIMONITE: *Brownish mineral that’s an iron ore
- STEWOVER: *Agonize about
- THREADED: *Like nuts and bolts
- PEAFLOUR: *Legume-derived ingredient of Scottish bannocks
Given the title: I focused on numbers. PEAFLOUR struck me as an odd themer: I knew there was something lurking there. I checked the last horizontal entry (Mike’s usual spot for an extra hint): SLOT, but I found no signal. The center entry MOVES seemed important, but it sent me towards various dead ends such as chess.
WSJ Contest – 09.18.2025
SUM (Find a total) unlocked it for me. Look for numbers. I noticed FOUR in PEAFLOUR and I had the rabbit: it contained FOUR and PEAL (matching TOLL’s clue). The rest fell quickly:
- ROOF -> LIMIT ONE: LIMONITE
- END -> SEVER TWO: STEWOVER
- SUM: ADD THREE: THREADED
- TOLL -> PEAL FOUR: PEAFLOUR
The mapped letters spell our contest solution REST. All of the relevant pieces were horizontal. The themers were in ONE though FOUR order, and REST’s mapped entries were in order as well. Also: no anagramming required, you just had to MOVE letters to two different words. Elegant puzzle by Mike: my favorite of the week so far. Let’s see what Friday brings.
FRIDAY 9/19: “All Together Now” by Mike Shenk
Mike rounded out Meta week with his Friday puzzle, and told us we’re looking for something to commemorate. Like many of you: I was wondering how Mike (and Matt and Patrick and Peter) would manage to thematically wrap all of this up. They did not disappoint. There were two long descriptive themers:
- 23a: TENTHLETTERS: This is where you’ll find a hint (with 45-Across)
- 45a: FROMTHECLUES: See the note at 23-Across
In hindsight I realized that all of the clues were 10+ letters long. Not a coincidence. That led to a straightforward grind-it-out solution. The tenth letters of all of the puzzle’s clues (both across and down) mapped to form our next clue. For example: Act the wol[f]: F. Nose of a sh[i]p: I, etc., etc. I’m not going to create the longest writeup in Crossword Fiend history by enumerating all 78 clues: click here if you want to see my notes (with punctuation removed).
WSJ Contest – 09.19.2025
Here’s the hint that forms from the clues: Find the letters appearing beneath the traditional tenth anniversary gift in the five grids. The traditional tenth anniversary gift is TIN, and sure enough: each grid contained a horizontal TIN. Here are the TIN entries, mapped to the letters below:
- Monday: LA(TIN)AMERICA -> [TEN]T
- Tuesday: (TIN)A -> [YEA]S
- Wednesday: CROS(TIN)I -> O[RSO]N
- Thursday: JUS(TIN) -> O[FME]
- Friday: (TIN)A -> [TAS]K
The letters below TIN spell our contest solution TEN YEARS OF METAS. Wow, what a finale!! And what a week: Mike, Matt, Peter, and Patrick have outdone themselves. Here’s the wrap-up for the week:
- LOS ANGELES
- HEARTBROKEN
- CHER
- REST
- TEN YEARS OF METAS
Solvers: please share your thoughts. There are fourteen mugs up for grabs this week, so good luck to everyone.
“Last Name First” by Patrick Berry: I had every meta solved except this one. I submitted “Teller” knowing it was wrong just to get in under the deadline. Five minutes later is when it hit me, & I solved it … at 12:15 am Monday! Too Late! Kicking myself in frustration. 😩
I feel like I won the Super Bowl of crosswording!!! This was so clever, as so, so much fun!! In particular, I am in awe of the Friday Meta and how Mike Shenk was able to work that out! Holy Moly!!!
While Friday’s meta was great in its own right, I was a tiny bit disappointed that it just involved following directions instead of any real meta-solving deeper thought. I was also expecting the final meta to take into account the answers to the other metas, like you’d find in a puzzle hunt. I was really eager to see how Los Angeles, Heartbroken, Cher, and Rest were going to come together into a final answer. That said, I enjoyed all the puzzles and metas!
+1
I too was expecting the “all together” notion to mean that we would string the five answers together. I had three of them but could not make sense of it. It seems odd to me that the first four meta answers were not part of the solution. Or maybe I am missing something.
I cheated a bit on Thursday and looked up words that mean “remainders” that are four letters long, haha, and came up with LEES ORTS and REST.
Didn’t figure out Tuesday’s meta because I was looking for BEATBOXING as the theme and not knowing what that was I looked it up and found out that Grandfather FLASH or someone invented it, so I chose FLASH as my meta solution as it was one of the CLUES. In my book, a clue is the thing not in the grid. The ones chosen here are ANSWERS. Very confusing.
My favorite of the five puzzles was Patrick Berry’s even though I was hoping it was SADE rather than CHER.
Congrats to all of you who got it.
BTW, that should be FREE PRESS in the first write-up, not FREE PREE
Correction. I see now that HEARTBROKEN was the meta answer. My bad.
One other rabbit hole I fell into on Thursday was thinking that LIMO NITE might mean GALA. :) Spent a lot of time trying to make the other themers fit that idea.
It was hard for me to unsee the LIMO NITE –>GALA connection too
On the Wednesday one I backsolved for the H once I realized I had C_ER. I really had a hard time with the H and the R until I saw RESOLD. But for the H I went through the clues so many times and never saw the Stringed Instruments for Harps, but the H I ended up using was for HASH (cannabis product). I googled banjo cannabis and got a hit!
“Remainders” of course is synonymous with “leftovers”. And if you solve for the letter that is over the leftmost (ie first) letter in each starred answer it yields, in proper order:
LEES
Can I be forgiven for concluding I had solved a clever meta?
Tuesday was the only one I couldn’t figure out – I was so stuck on the idea that it had to do with music due to the plethora of the solfege scale appearing throughout the grid, and I was thinking it might have something to do with the ABBA as a rhyming scheme, or DFLAT. So I tried to backsolve and the clues “natural do” and “sore” stuck out to me. Ultimately I sent in some question marks for that one, and now I’m *heartbroken* that I didn’t see the true solution.
Regardless, I had a blast with this meta suite and appreciate the hard work that went into this by all the constructors! Thank you!
My two favorite meta puzzles were Last Names First by Patrick Berry and Remainders by Mike Shenk, though I must say that innocuously hiding the directions for solving final, multi-puzzle meta in the clues of the Friday by Mike Shenk was so impressive!
I needed a little coaxing on both of these metas by crossword buddy John. I had to laugh when I got ONE TWO THREE FOUR and John reminded me of the puzzles title, “Remainders”.
I realized with horror this morning that I forgot to submit the meta answers for the first four puzzles. I just submitted the Friday meta answer, thinking that was the goal of the five. I hope that does not disqualify me from the prize drawing.
I was also impressed that each constructor not only had to build their own crossword meta, but also their own pieces of the Friday meta. Great teamwork!
Thanks to Mike, Patrick, Peter, and Matt for such a fun and memorable week of solving.
Enjoyed the heck out of these, though only got Monday and Wednesday in addition to the Friday gimme (which didn’t bother me at all). And since I haven’t gotten an email from the WSJ, I’ll just assume that even having 12 shots at a coveted mug didn’t make it happen. Ah, well, it’s always good to have something to shoot for.
I didn’t try to solve all five metas, but when I got to Friday’s, I almost submitted “Ten Years Of Me” as an ego-salute to Mike Shenk. But then submitted “Ten Years Of Metas”.