WSJ (Contest) Grid: 15 minutes; Meta: 15 more 
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Patrick Berry’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Missing Out” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a four-letter word. There were four theme entries:
- CRASHINTO: Collide with
- SPEARMINT: Julep ingredient
- DEFAULTON: Fail to pay, as a loan
- LAKEFRONT: Like many vacation houses
I couldn’t find a signal in the theme entries, so I turned to the clues. There were four in the form of ___ out.
- PRINT: ___ out (make a hard copy of)
- CAST: ___ out (exile)
- LEFT: ___ out (omitted)
- DEAL: ___ out (distribute)
WSJ Contest – 02.22.2026
I spotted FUTON in DEFAULTON (matching SOFA’s clue). Then take FUTON out, leaving grid entry DEAL. The rest fell quickly. Here they are, in theme entry order:
- LION: Animal sought on safari -> RHINO (CRASHINTO – CAST)
- ORE: Mining find -> SEAM (SPEARMINT – PRINT)
- SOFA: Makeshift bed for a guest -> FUTON (DEFAULTON – DEAL)
- TOLEDO: Big city in Ohio -> AKRON (LAKEFRONT – LEFT)
The mapped grid entries spell our contest solution LOST. Another stunning meta by Patrick. Complex and very clean. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Not only did Berry deliver a great meta, he also managed to make the grid smooth and easy. Maybe too easy, as people are complaining on the WSJ site comment section that it feels like Monday more than Friday, but I will take this over any Mike Shenk crap that used HUBABO in the grid. (I am still very salty about that.)
That being said, Shenk and Gaffney each have to churn out a WSJ meta fortnightly while they also have other things to attend to, so we should ask less from them, but at least, *at the very least*, one shouldn’t use HUBABO in a grid, or in any puzzle ever.
I’m with you on HUBABO. I almost abandoned crosswords completely. It will be a long time before I forgive him on that one.
It’s no wonder, then, that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) classifies HUBAROS a Vulnerable (one small step above Endangered) when cruciverbalists so glibly and crassly dismiss them. For shame, I say!
Agree, HUBABO is the virtual equivalent of ‘6 random letters’…
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Really liked this one. Great construction.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
+1
I knew when I saw Mr. Berry’s byline that I was in for a treat. His puzzles are always smooth and well-thought-out. His other variety puzzles are beyond my ken alas but this one fell easily enough. I enjoyed doing it. And even solved it all on my own.
I can forgive Mike for Hubabo partly because I had entered a slightly different answer. It is also because his puzzles are usually clean and intelligent and fair. What I can’t abide are the New Yorker crosswords that rely on crossings of two teddibly au courant celebs of the ephemeral 15-minute variety that one is too uninterested in to even bother googling. Those are flung into the trash with the rest of the magazine.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
Since the first across entry was MA’AM, the last one GIRL, and the title “Miss”ing Out, I spent a lot of time following a false trail of looking at entries with women’s names. Eventually I decided to concentrate on the “Out” part of the title and was much more successful.
I considered LOST but only because of the Title.
Alas, I didn’t submit it.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Smooth, clean, and clever, no surprise from Mr. Berry. The surprise was me actually getting one of his metas.
The penalty for whining about HUBABO should be having to solve 20 of Eugene T. Maleska’s NYT puzzles before you can play the WSJ Contest again.
I was a little disappointed that the positioning of the letters in the grid did not make LOST more obviously the answer. There are other anagrams – LOTS, SLOT, and even S.T.O.L. Certainly “lost” seemed to be indicated by the title, but some constructors use the position in the diagram as an assist, or at least a confirmation.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
The extraction was in top-to-bottom order of the theme entries.