WSJ (Contest) Grid: 15 minutes; Meta: 15 more 
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Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Black Friday” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for something Black Friday shoppers may look for. Mike provided a hint in 27d: DAYS, clued as What SMTWTFS may represent.
WSJ Contest – 11.30.2025
Knowing how literal Shenk is: I thought: look for black squares that could contain an F. Sure enough, there they were: four black corner squares formed two new words with an F added. Those new words mapped to the clues of other grid entries. Here they are in mapped grid order:
- 6d: LEI: It’s worn around the collar -> SCARF
- 17a: OWIE: Boo-boo -> GOOF
- 24a: WILD: Uncultivated -> FALLOW
- 29d: PORK: Butcher shop buy -> BEEF
- 35a: ROBIN: Small songbird -> FINCH
- 38d: ISM: Creed -> BELIEF
- 53d: CLOSE: Go out of business -> FAIL
- 69a: EPEE: Fencing sword -> FOIL
The mapped entries spell our contest solution LOW PRICE. Great holiday-themed meta by Mike. Solvers: Please share your thoughts.
I thought of looking for BF, but not just F. I did wonder about a BLACK square and should have tried harder.
So I decided WASNTME (which might mean I instead of Me since it is more grammatically correct) was the hint. I looked for words with prominent I’s and found several odd entries that end in I. LEI, UTERI, AMATI, ORCI, HOPI, and ANDI but I, ahem, wasn’t successful.
Nice job Conrad!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
I noticed WASNTME uses all the letters from SMTWTFS except the F.
Maybe that was a coincidence, but it made me realize that the grid contains no F, and that made me look for places where F can be added, which led me to the solution.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
Alas. I looked at the sixth letter in all the seven letter answers and got S A L A T E M and made a very tenuous leap from there to META SALE.
I kind of did the same but submitted TAMALES from the same letters. Living my whole life in SoCal, tamales are a big Christmas thing in the Hispanic community. It didn’t feel right but I was sure the sixth letter in 7-letter grid entries was the key and nothing else came of it. It was a fantastic actual answer.
Was, or is, implies the nominative case, therefore if you are worried about being grammatically correct, one would probably use was, not I, rather than the subjective term which in this case would be the word – “me”. By the by, I was totally lost on this meta both subjectively as well as objectively. However, after reading the solution, I say Mr. Shenk is a friggin GENIUS!
The rule for using “I” in this context is based on the traditional grammar principle of the predicate nominative (or subject complement), which states that a linking verb (like “was”) should be followed by a subject pronoun. No comma is necessary.
I was close. I found “the rabbit”, but couldn’t chase it down. I didn’t get the Days->F connection, but I did find that the black corner squares could be replaced by F’s (Black Friday). I found 7 of 8 of the alternatives correctly, but found COWS instead of PORK. So the closest I came was proposing (C)LOWRICE (and other, less English-y letter salads).
Missed it by *that* much.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Fantastic puzzle Mr. Shenk! The fact there were no F’s in the grid influenced me to rate this a 5 instead of a 4.5. Nice touch!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
I followed the same path that you did Conrad. I have learned to take Mike literally as well, although I still don’t see the solutions sometimes. This time I did.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
Figured to look at black squares from the title, and the obvious first one to check in the upper left could take an F (or an S), so checked the other corners and hey, F’s all around. So then started looking for black squares where R would fit, and I, and D, etc…gong. Check for alternate answers to the new F words, bingo. Knew I had it but was still puzzled as to why only the black F, and then finally snapped to the days of the week clue. Sort of a double “Aha!” on this one, or an “Aha!” “Duh!”