Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Mixed Together” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a five-letter word. There were three long across entries, but I couldn’t tell if they were thematic. The central entry provided a clue:
- ODDSANDENDS: Mixed items (and clues to the contest answer)
WSJ Contest Solution – 08.04.24
Mike is quite literal when he provides a clue like that. But there are a lot of ways you can interpret his overt clues. I stumbled around for a while, noting odd numbered grid entries, and counting the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc., letters of each long entry. All noise. I refocused and realized I needed to identify the last letter of each of each grid entry with an odd length. LUMET is five letters long, ISIAH is five, LEE is three, etc. I noticed that most of the grid entries were an even length, leading credence to my theory.
I started with the across entries, leading to THEAASERIME. “THE” was promising, followed by noise, but I could sense some signal in that noise. I also mapped out the odd-lengthed down entries (USE, MGM, etc) and the meta fell into place. The final letters of the across and down grid entries with odd lengths spell THE META ANSWER IS MERGE in grid order, leading to our contest solution MERGE. Solvers: please share your thoughts. I’m in London for work and don’t have a thematic song to end with, but I walked along the Thames today, crossed Lambeth Bridge, and later heard this song in a pub.
No luck here; never thought to use entry length (though haven’t a few recent metas required looking at entry length? I need to add that to my toolbox). My first thought was to find the squares where the last letter of odd-numbered entries intersected, but only found two such squares. Then I tried odd-numbered squares that were also the last letter of an entry (9 squares), then tightened that to odd-numbered squares that were the last letter of odd-numbered entries (5 squares that anagrammed to TRESS, which I was sure wasn’t the answer).
Ugh, I was in the right ballpark but rejected it because there were “too many” odd length entries…
Exactly what happened to me. Started counting them and I thought no way would I be able to distill all of them into a five letter word. Drats!
+1
+2
I couldn’t get anywhere with this puzzle. Perhaps because I was in the middle of a tropical storm Debby. I knew it had to do with odds and ends so I concentrated on those. I wondered if it could be O’s and E’s. That weird entry crossing it A and W seemed to indicate it. oddly there were four words that begin with O and ended with E. ORIOLE, odense, online, and Oakville. Couldn’t find a fifth. I actually considered Merge. But it didnt fit the meaning of Odds and Ends which to me signifies a mix of things that don’t match up. Leftovers. Bits snd Pieces. (sorry for poor typing. Tennis elbow.)
PS I also was intrigued and distracted by EVENTIME. Since Odds could be a betting term. Even Odds etc. And Time is an anagram of Item.
congrats Conrad!
I, too, have learned that Mike can be quite literal, but it took putting it down after just an initial foray and then getting the idea of the odd length answers while in bed. Once I started that, it fell quickly. Had the same “aha” about using both across and down answers too.
Here’s what I wrote to the WSJ when I submitted my answer:
____________
A meta meta! Brilliant!
ODDS AND ENDS are a letter bank.
ODENSE is the only answer in the grid that has all the letters from the bank (and no others).
Lop off the first letter because the prompt says the answer is a five-letter word.
The answer DENSE describes how I usually feel when I read the explanation for a meta answer I didn’t get.
Good one! :)
Thanks!
I don’t know if anyone at the WSJ reads the contest entry emails (it would be easy enough to automatically sort them into correct and incorrect answers), but if they do, maybe my email amused them. Or maybe they read it and just 🙄.