Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Listen to Your Customers” — Conrad’s writeup.
This we’re looking a well-known chain of stores. There were five numbered theme entries, here they are in order:
- Misbehave like never before (1): HIT NEW LOWS
- Ellen DeGeneres’s spouse (2) PORTIA DE ROSSI
- 2019 Lizzo single (3): TRUTH HURTS
- With 35-Down, noted compilation album of 1976 (4): OLE ELO
- Equipment for archers (5): BOWS AND ARROWS
Based on the title, I knew this would be a pronunciation-based meta. Not my favorite type of meta due to regional differences in pronunciation. But this one ended up being clear-cut (to me).
WSJ Contest – 11.17.2024
I spotted AVIS (Enterprise rival), and thought HERTZ, a homophone of HURTS. I had the rabbit: one word of each theme answer matched the clue of an entry with the same pronunciation:
- COSTCO (Chain with huge stores) -> LOWES/LOWS (1)
- OPEL (German automaker) -> PORCHE/PORTIA (2)
- AVIS -> (Enterprise rival) -> HERTZ/HURTS (3)
- LOREAL (Brand in the cosmetics aisle) -> OLAY/OLE (4)
- SONOS (Brand of speakers) -> BOSE/BOWS (5)
The first letters of the mapped entries spell COALS, a homophone of our contest answer KOHLS. Solvers: please share your thoughts. I’ll end with a non-thematic song featured in The Penguin. All my favorite cover songs radically deconstruct the original.
Enjoyable. Very similar solving mechanism to the puzzle from a few weeks ago, “Hear, Hear”