Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Letters From Another Country” — Conrad’s writeup.
This we’re looking a five-letter country. I made a mental note to look for countries in the grid and eventually found the expected five. I struggled a bit to complete the grid, which usually indicates that the entries are crucial to the meta theme. I spotted rabbit when I encountered 22a’s clue: Country that shares a border with Hungary and Austria. I confidently filled in SLOVAKIA, only to realize that it didn’t work based on the cross entries. The answer had to be SLOVENIA (which also borders Hungary and Austria). Matt delivered a classic vaguely-clued meta this week. Here are the five countries who’s clues applied to other (equal length) countries:
WSJ Contest – 10.20.2002
- SLOVENIA: Country that shares a border with Hungary and Austria -> SLOVAKIA
- RWANDA: Country in Africa’s Great Lakes region -> UGANDA
- ALGERIA: Country due south of Luxembourg -> NIGERIA
- CHILE: Country on the Pacific Ocean -> CHINA
- OMAN: Country you can see from the top of the Burj Khalifa (on a clear day) -> IRAN
The paired countries differed by two letters, so I looked for 5-letter words in the grid containing four of those letters plus one more. Here they are in grid order:
- [S]NAKE -> SLOV(EN)A/SLOV(AK)IA
- [P]RIMO -> (OM)AN/(IR)AN
- LAN[A]I -> (AL)GERIA/(NI)GERIA
- AL[I]EN -> CHI(LE)/CHI(NA)
- WRU[N]G -> (RW)ANDA/(UG)ANDA
The fifth extra letter in the mapped grid entries spell our contest solution SPAIN. Fun meta! Five paired countries, each the same length and differing by two letters, then mapping back to five-letter grid entries to spell another country. And the title locked it in. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
A bit of inelegance in that the (AL)GERIA/(NI)GERIA pair also mapped to ALI[E]N, but it all worked out in the end.
I first thought Nepal,but then found Spain and decided it was in a more alphabetical order given the clues.