WSJ (Contest) Grid: untimed; Meta: 15 minutes 
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Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “A Matter of Degree” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a well-known magazine. It took me a while to find all of the theme entries (the first four were obvious based on their location and length): there were seven. LESE and ESSE unlocked it for me: each themer contained a secondary intercardinal direction (TIL that term):
WSJ Contest – 06.07.2026
- LESE: ___-majesté -> ESE
- CROSSWORD: You’re doing one now -> SSW
- DAWNWELLS: She played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island” -> WNW
- SPANNER: Wrench, to Brits -> NNE
- ARCHENEMY: The Joker, to Batman -> ENE
- ANNWILSON: Lead singer on “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You” -> NNW
- ESSE: To be, to Tiberius -> SSE
That left one missing direction: WSW, which is contained our contest answer: NEWSWEEK. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
Before seeing LESE and ESSE, I thought maybe it’d just be a magazine with a direction. My first thought was ESSENCE. But fortunately I waited for the other shoe to drop.
I spotted six secondary intercardinal directions but missed the one in SPANNER. I still thought that central answer was important and I decided you had to “span the grid” in order to solve the meta. As a result, I spent a lot of time plotting the directions from the center of the grid to see which squares they intersected at the outer edges. Obviously, no luck. If I had noticed the seventh, I might have realized I needed to look for the missing one. A very clever puzzle!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4 stars
+1
Congratulations to those that suss this one out, I didn’t even come close to getting the first step: never thought of ‘secondary intercardinal directions’ as matters of degree. Once again, rather than being helpful, I thought the title provided little more than giant red herrings: ‘degree’ as in famous degrees, like ‘nth’ and ‘third’; and degree as in angles, like ‘right, acute, and obtuse’. Any link between ‘degree’ and ‘direction’ completely escaped me.
I did think about directions rather than college degrees or temperatures, but the theme-similar 67 Across “it’s a matter of interest” made me think LOAN might be hint, as in Loan Words. I also saw a lot of APs in the grid but no APR. Decided to leave this one for the meta-masters.
I looked up the top 20 magazines in the US and did not see Newsweek mentioned. I thought it had closed years ago.
I remember reading somewhere that the title of the Hitchcock movie “North By Northwest” is an inside joke. That doesn’t exist. But NNW as a compass point does. This puzzle left me feeling like Cary Grant out on that field with the crop duster coming at him.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 4.5 stars
D’OH! Saw the directions and thought degrees on a compass immediately, then beat my brains out for at least an hour trying to tie a magazine to WSW, or “compass,” or 247.5, even put it down and came back to it, but the ol’ “entry that would complete the set” trick never occured to me. Hate when that happens.
I ALMOST got the right answer for the wrong reason.
Found the directions in the longer entries but didn’t see SSE, ESE (or, of course, WSW).
Since the directions are N, E, W, S… I thought it might be NEWSweek anyway!
Then I saw ESSE and LESE, and it was confirmed!
I thought Newsweek stopped publishing yrs ago.
It restarted years ago as well.
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 5 stars
Newsweek with its directional WSW is a brilliant solution. That alone makes this puzzle extraordinary.
I arrived at the correct answer for all the wrong reasons.
In searching for the correct solving path, I wrestled with two thorny questions:
1. Is 67A “It’s a matter of interest” supposed to be a hint or is it a red herring? This is my only nit about this puzzle.
2. Ginger or Mary Ann? Gee, Matt, this was difficult enough without that distraction!
Puzzle: WSJ (Contest); Rating: 3 stars
I can understand having NEWS in the meta-solution, but where does the K come from?
NEWSWEEK is, as near as I can tell, the only well-known magazine whose name includes WSW. That’s all.
TY Eric, for always being so responsive to solvers questions!