WSJ (Contest) Grid: 25 minutes; Meta: an hour 
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Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Breaking News” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a five-letter word. There were five theme entries with numbered clues. Each entry contained a shorter word matching the numbers. Some had multiples (for example: LAW/ALL in WALLAWALLA). The ones that proved correct are bracketed:
WSJ Contest – 12.21.2025
- ELECTR[ICE]EL: Shocking swimmer (3)
- SLI[DEAL]ONG: Go down, as a mountain slope (4)
- T[HEART]FULDODGER: Literary pickpocket (5)
- WAL[LAW]ALLA: Northwest city (3)
- CIN[CODE]MAYO: Fun on a fifth (4)
The grid was tough for me, indicating it was probably working hard to serve the meta. Some entries had weird clues, a common meta mechanism. EVENT seemed like an oddly specific entry for Super Bowl LI, for one. It took me a while to figure out the mechanism: switching the title word breaking to breaker unlocked it for me. Five grid entries matched the shorter word + breaker:
- CAKE: It may get the party started -> ICE BREAKER
- LIMIT: Highest offer you can manage -> DEAL BREAKER
- EVENT: Super Bowl LI, for one -> HEART BREAKER
- FELON: Serious criminal -> LAW BREAKER
- TECH: Person helping you get your password back, maybe -> CODE BREAKER
The first letter of the mapped entries spell our contest solution CLEFT (I think). I’m not 100% on this one: LIMIT seems a bit squishy, but if I’m right on the rest, that has to be it. As always: I may be missing something. We’ll find out. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
There is another word that works with the last three letters, and it is more consistent with the title: THEFT.
What word??
And T from Thaw gets you to T*EFT. 44 Across HIM can certainly be a dealbreaker
I don’t think this works. The clue for THAW is a verb phrase, but ICE BREAKER is a noun, so it doesn’t work with the clue. And “Yonder dude” doesn’t mean DEAL BREAKER at all.
My line of logic exactly, though one of the little voices in my head kept telling me that THEFT wasn’t quite right somehow…never looked at how well the clues fit the ___BREAKER terms, just the answers.
I finished with a really funny mistake that only this writeup made me realize was a mistake. Somehow I thought “It might get a party started” was COKE. Like the drug. And Charlotte Roe sounded as correct as Rae to me since I don’t know that name. I was like, damn, getting a party started with cocaine is pretty risqué for this puzzle, but hey, good for them for pushing the envelope a bit!
I could swear I saw an article some years ago where the writer devised the “Shortz Ratio” for common crossword clues with the # of times the person is mentioned in a NYT xword clue / all other NYT mentions and Charlotte Rae (star of 80s TV “The Facts of Life”, who has largely been replaced these days by Issa, whose entire name is a constructor wet dream) was the champion.
In other news, after reading Conrad’s post and the comments, I’m still unsure what the answer was or how this thing worked.
It’s not the grid entries that match the xx-breaker, but it’s the clues (and probably just the clues).
Calling a CAKE an ice breaker is quite a stretch.
Agree, CAKE as an ice breaker is odd.
That’s the wrong way to think about the meta mechanism. CAKE isn’t an ice breaker. The way the meta works is that ICE BREAKER replaces the *clue* for CAKE, which is “It may get the party started.”
ICE BREAKER isn’t supposed to be a synonym for CAKE. It’s just supposed to be another answer to CAKE’s clue.
How did you get from breaking to breaker in the first place??
I focused on a red herring: GALES, clued as Dangers to ships. I wrote ICEBERG in my notes. I focused on ICE, and then CAKE’s weird clue lead me in the right direction.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
I saw the ICE, HEART, CODE, etc words and made the connection there to the BREAKER suffix. I think ICE and HEART jumped out as both working with BREAKER.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
I got the five words, but could not see how to proceed after that. So I tried to understand what the title might add to where to go next. “News” didn’t yield anything for me, but “Breaking” gave me this thought:
Breaking News is something new, that’s news-worthy, and that is so new, in fact, that what the news is about is actually a news breaker.
So, I wrote this down:
___ breaker
How do the words ice, deal, heart, law, and code look now? This was the next step.
When I looked at ICE breaker, THAW came to mind, and FELON for LAW breaker, I was having trouble with the rest and mentioned it to a friend, who suggested looking at the clues instead. These were a bit of a stretch in some cases, both the clue about getting a party started clearly fits ICE breaker, as does the clue for FELON fitting LAW breaker. The clue for LIMIT was the last to fall.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
I had the C**FT pretty easily, and guessed CRAFT, even though R and A definitely didn’t fit the theme. For being a non-football fan to know (or even consider) that a game 9 years ago is still considered to be a “heartbreaker” is pretty lame.
It was the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history… the 28-3 lead that the Falcons blew became part of pop culture via memes, monologue jokes, etc.
Even nine years later, it’s still the epitome of heartbreaking in the sports world
Correct. Sometimes the need to research a clue becomes necessary in a meta. Unlike crossword fill, i don’t hesitate.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
I had CL*FT and figured it had to be an E so went looking for one. Had to the google the game and the AI summary used the word “heartbreaker”. I have a double whammy of not being into sportsball but also not living in the US
I managed to figure this one out after putting it aside for a while. At first it looked easy, since the words ICE, DEAL, HEART, LAW and CODE seemed pretty obvious. (Although IDEA could have been the word for Slide Along.) But I couldn’t FATHOM the next step.
After a nap, I spotted MOROSE and thought of MORSE CODE. That led nowhere except it made me think of CODE BREAKER and the clue about getting help with your password, and its answer TECH. I then realized that all the key terms could end in BREAKER. I came up with CLEFT soon after.
BUT I too thought the CAKE answer for the party clue was weird. Usually that is in the middle or end of a party, isn’t it? So that made me look again at THAW, and I tried to find an H word to make THEFT (which is also a kind of BREAKING and entering) and the LOUVRE heist was just in the NEWS. I decided HIC would be the answer because a HICCUP is kind of a DEAL breaker.
I was going to submit THEFT but then remembered that it is the CLUE that makes the answer fit and the clue for HIC did not mean anything relating to breaking a DEAL.
Hence, CLEFT had to be the solution. I’m glad I got one of these after a drought.
Thanks Matt for a fun puzzle.
Cue up “Breaker! Breaker!” with Chuck Norris.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 2.5 stars
I got the two step process fairly easily, but couldn’t get a satisfying answer out of it. Cake and Felon seemed obviously right. Others less so. Ended up with several possible strings of letters, none of which seemed clearly correct. E.g., I don’t see how the highest offer you can make is a deal breaker — it’s above the highest offer you can make that would be a deal breaker. Sort of, but not quite right. Oh well.
Perhaps one’s limit is a deal breaker to the person you are making the offer to.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
Three thoughts.
1. Agree that the deal breaker is not the limit but above the limit.
2. Really wanted the CODEBREAKER to be 20 across “WWII Heroes” but rejected it as plural.
3. I asked ChatGPT what was the most heartbreaking Super Bowl and it served up LI.
Good puzzle.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
Yeah — I was eyeballing RAF as well, and dropped it for the same reason.
I got to Super Bowl LI as “heartbreaker” last. I kept wanting to find EROS in the grid, clued as “Lover boy,” or some such on-the-nose cluing for the “E” that didn’t require knowledge of which specific Super Bowl was LI.
…but I did get the meta, though I agree with others, getting from “breaking” to “breaker” was a leap I didn’t understand why I was making.
Does the word “News” in the title have any significance?
I just did the first step and used the first letter of words I had found – Code, Heart, Ice, Law, and Deal to get CHILD. That seemed a little too easy – and it was!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 2 stars
Agree with the comments re the Heartbreaker clue (an obscure football clue cmon) but even worse – “Daphne” is a far more elegant and well suited answer.
I spent way too much time looking for the Dealbreaker link – stared at Limit several times and dismissed it.
But I always appreciate the efforts of our puzzle makers.
Well I just anagrammed the first letters of the breakable things and submitted “Child”… wrong again!!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
“Child” would have been a much more apropos answer to breaking news… given it’s just a few days till Christmas
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
Didn’t see anyone say it but for a while I thought that the clue “unsettled Questions” fit deal breaker pretty well. took me a while to get off of that one.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
Agree… it fits deal breaker much better than limit
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Regarding this puzzle, a few thoughts(TLDR version):
1. I really liked it. Alternative answer Metas have bec ome very common. This one turns this genre on its ear! Well played Matt!
2. When it became clear the answer to 15A would be CAKE I knew this would be a alternative answer mechanism.
3. For me, the jump from breaking to breaker came with ice and how perfectly it replaced cake as the answer to 15A “It may get the party started”.
4. It had become common to clue the word EVENT as “Superbowl, e.g.” By adding LI to the clue Matt transformed this generic clueing to a specific superbowl and outcome, thus making event no longer a suitable answer.
5. I solved this on Friday but did not submit until Sunday fearing there may be one additional step I was missing. I finally consulted Merriam-Webster on the definition of cleft, and upon seeing “a space or opening made by or as if by splitting”, I realized that was what Matt had done to the theme answers by removing the hidden words, and submitted with confidence.
6. This puzzle created quite the stir of conversation in my circle, which is what a good puzzle will do.