WSJ (Contest) Grid: 25 minutes; Meta: slept on it 
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Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “I’ve Got Your Number” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a member of a well-known group of twelve. There were no obvious theme entries beyond the center entry: EVENLYDIVISIBLE, clued as Like some numbers, vis-à-vis some smaller numbers.
It took me a long time to find the signal: “some smaller numbers” threw me off. Twelve was mentioned in the meta’s clue, so I looked at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th letters (small numbers that 12 can be evenly divided by) in potential themers. I struck out, so I went to bed.
WSJ Contest – 12.07.2025
I spent the next morning exploring that same doomed rabbit hole, getting nowhere. I brainstormed other ideas, and thought to check every 12th numbered letter in the grid. I was convinced this would go nowhere but I gave it a shot.
What do you know: that worked. The grid entry letters that were evenly divided by 12 spell our contest solution ATHENA. One of the twelve Olympian gods.
I forgot that there were twelve Olympians, but there are, and they are well-known, so that part of the meta is quite fair. Some smaller numbers was misleading to me. Twelve is one number, not “some,” and it is arguably not small. But: if you look at it the other way: twelve is evenly divisible by four numbers (five counting 1). So that works, in a counter-intuitive way (to my brain). Solvers: please share your thoughts.
The group of twelve I came up with was signs of the zodiac.
The inclusion of LYON in the southeast struck me as Matt’s clue that LEO was the correct sign.
Throughout the grid there are lots of Ls, Es and Os in various words further suggesting that LEO was correct.
The long answers didn’t help at all, but sometimes that happens in Matt’s puzzles.
Seemed like “evenly divisible “ must be important, but getting nowhere with that, I submitted LEO.
I’m a math instructor, but I hate math in crossword metas. Sure, the answer here is right in front of you with a quite simple mechanism, but the EVENLY DIVISIBLE clue was rather open ended and the 12 instruction from the prompt was too subtle. I thought of looking at the EVEN numbers, then two-digit numbers where one digit was divisible by the other, composite numbers. Gave up.
Gee, no wonder I found the grid much smoother than most other WSJ Fridays. The meta doesn’t pose much obstruction to the grid.
I was pretty sure that the answer was either one of the Olympic gods or one of the apostles in the New Testament. I dove into a treacherous rabbit hole when I noticed that you can get GODEL, the answer to 64D, by adding G to the letters of 8A, LODE, and rearranging things a bit. Plus 64 is evenly divisible by 8… Add an S to 1D, HEAT, and rearrange the letters to get THEAS (27D). 27 is obviously evenly divisible by 1… though most numbers tend to be. Dang, you can do the same thing when you add a T to 6D (IAN) and rearrange letters to get AINT, the answer to 12D. 6 divides evenly into 12!
Oh and my last-minute attempt has me considering all the faith-based clues in the grid – for some time I wondered if the “EVE” in “Evenly divisible” was related to the meta.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 2.5 stars
This meta was a bit of a dog’s breakfast — Roman numerals dividing into Arabic numerals yielding a Greek goddess. Give it a pan, for Pantheon. I’m almost ashamed that I solved it.
Ya sou. I kept trying to work with Roman numerals. Embedded in the longish answers are VI, LI, CI, DI, and MI (but oddly no XI, or better yet XII). I should have gone to Greece instead of Italy.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 2.5 stars
The 12s are MULTIPLES, not DIVISORS of 12…
Had the answer, but:
Evenly Divisible leads one to think of FACTORS; but the meta is really MULTIPLES!
FACTORS and MULTIPLES are opposite! We were led astray!
This felt like running a DODECATHON.
I noticed the main themer pretty early on, but I was sure the ten-letter answers AFICIONADO, IMINNOCENT, SUBWAYLINE and AMIABILITY had something to do with the solution as well since they both can be evenly divided into two sections of five letters each. That got me nowhere. The title “I’ve Got Your Number” seemed superfluous.
Thought of as many duodecads as I could find. The Twelve Apostles, the Twelve Days of Christmas, the Twelve signs of the Zodiac, the movie The Twelve Chairs, and of course the Olympic Pantheon. Also thought of TWELFTH Man which is a football term for FAN or FANS. Aficionado seemed to fit that idea. I also wondered about WEAN at the end. Were we supposed to remove letters from certain words? Such as the O in PIOUS to get Pope PIUS? Which paired nicely with INNOCENT. And LEI becoming LEO. Dead-end.
I ended up not submitting anything. Although I had a lot of fun trying to figure it out.
Glad I didn’t spend too much on this — the solution requires almost nothing in the grid, so there are SO MANY false leads to follow. I could’ve spent another two weeks on this and not thought to look at every 12th letter. I can’t remember a time when the “in” comes almost exclusively from the answer prompt.
My most promising false lead was noticing that, in almost all of the long answers in the grid, there’s the pattern IxI, where the x is a roman numeral. The title could be interpreted as the I’s “having” a number between them. I was going to think about how to evenly divide these numbers somehow, but SUBWAYLINE doesn’t have this pattern, so I had to abandon it.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
Noticing the contraction “I’ve” in the title “I’ve got your number” led to finding the only clue with a contraction- 12 down “colloquial contraction”. Realizing that the number was twelve, I started looking at multiples of twelve. Not sure if that was his intention, but worked for me.
I’m offering a response only because this puzzle needs a 12th comment.
I didn’t get it, and never even had a clue as to where to start.
I’m on to the next one…
In which being a math teacher makes the puzzle harder…
Did someone mention that the downward word “skips” evenly divides evenly divided? So, skip counting … I assume it was a clue.
But here is a crazy red herring(??!)
The only number in the grid is TEN at 69. If you take the divisors of 69, they are 1 3 23 69. In succession those boxes spell out HINT.
But how is that a hint? Crazy coincidence? TEN is in Athena. And if you take it out you get AHA! Well, cute. Anyhow, I ended up not knowing what to make of that…
Does anyone see how that might actually be a hint?
Also, there is an almost three: thren and nine: nino at box 60. The not-correct letters are N-O, the contraction for the word “number.” 3+9 is twelve, the skipping value. Though we already had 12 from the description. Again, thinking too hard? Both of these kind of led me down red herring paths…so are these red herrings/side quests that are part of the fun? As I said, I am new to this….
And I have to admit the 69 thing confuses me.