WSJ (Contest) Grid: 10 minutes; Meta: 10 minutes 
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Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Webster’s Abridged” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a six-letter word. I noticed a lot of A’s in the grid, while solving and then I spotted 54d: NOAH (as in: no AH), clued as Webster who created a dictionary. Sure enough: there were six AHs in the grid, and those entires matched the final word of another grid entry’s clue after the AH was removed. Here they are in mapped entry order:
WSJ Contest – 04.19.2026
- 7a JUG: Container for wine -> W(AH)INE
- 26d AXONS: There are billions of them in the human brain -> B(AH)RAIN
- 33a RIALS: Omani money -> M(AH)ONEY
- 37d GOUT: Woe in a toe -> T(AH)OE
- 46a OBAMA: Last name of Sasha and Malia -> M(AH)ALIA
- 56d NEE: Born, in Paris -> PARI(AH)S
The first letter of the mapped entries spell our contest solution JARGON. “No AH” is a classic Mike Shenk mechanism: I enjoyed it. Solvers: Please share your thoughts. I don’t have a thematic song to end with, so here are the Kings Of Leon.
Really had fun, once I understood the gimmick. At first, I saw that Noah was scrambled in MAHONEY, but it didn’t last long. I also briefly toyed with abridged words like TALC being used much more frequently than talcum.
Once I realized I had to parse NOAH as No AH, it clicked. The entry that helped me get there was OBAMA as it was very close to M(ah)LIA. Seeing that Malia was also in the clue for that answer, I scoured the rest of the clues to get the others.
I also toyed with including TINHATS since removing the reversed AH gives us tints.
Lastly, loved the clue for John MAHONEY. While he was certainly great as Marty Crane, he was great in “Tin Men” “Moonstruck” and, one of my favorites, Kid Gleason, the White Sox manager, in “Eight Men Out.”
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
If it wasn’t for last week’s “C over T,” I might have stewed over this one for a while. But I saw the “No AH” right away and solved it quickly.
This was a slightly challenging puzzle for me. At first, I was sure that the gimmick had to do with abbreviations, such as autos, capt., in LA, champ, USN, Aussie. But the title made it clear that it is Webster himself who is abridged. And I finished up from there. Never heard of Romish, and have to admit that slowed me down for a while. Good one, Mike. MAHALO!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
Also originally went looking at the “abridged” answers and clues, got nowhere, put it down, came back a day later, and had the “No AH!” moment. Nice puzzle, nice meta, also struck me as a most Shenkian mechanism.