Grid:8 minutes; Meta: 12 more
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Under Wraps” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for what you might experience when opening a gift. There were no clear theme entries, but Mike parked a clue in his usual spot (last horizontal entry): SANTA, clued as Secret ___ (office gift exchange).
We were looking for secret Santas. I saw none in the grid so I turned to the clues. I noticed the similarity and oddness in Pheasant attribute and Pleasant area. I had the rabbit: there were eight clues containing SANTA:
WSJ Contest – 12.22.2024
- 1a: SIDES -> What those who are parti(san ta)ke
- 19a: UPON -> Conver(sant a)bout
- 21a: RINGNECK -> Phea(sant a)ttribute
- 26a: PENGUIN -> Flightles(s Anta)rctic inhabitant
- 42a: ROLL -> Crois(sant a)lternative
- 50a: ITALIAN -> Pi(san ta)lk
- 55a: SCORPIUS -> Constellation that contain(s Anta)res
- 70a: EDEN -> Plea(sant a)rea
The entries hiding secret Santas in their clues spell our contest solution SURPRISE. A very Shenkian puzzle: a classic nudge in the lower right, and SANTA spanned two words in varying ways. Solvers: please share you thoughts.
Huzzah! I was looking for “SECRET” in the clues at first (anagrams only) then realized I should be looking for “SANTA” instead. A much better gift than last week!! (for me,anyway) Merry Christmas to All!
I got there eventually, but found the title extremely misleading.
Ho, ho, ho! This took me a few stabs at parsing the meta. I knew we were looking for “secret Santas,” but the title made me think they would be “wrapping” around like those tricky slitherers in Word Searches. I saw four possible SANTA anagrams in the grid, the simplest one is the one above ENYA. But that got me nowhere. I was going to send in GLEE (although DREAD popped into my head too).
Eventually, after a walk to clear my head, I just happened to glance at the puzzle and saw PISAN TALK and SANTA jumped out at me as if he’d shimmied down the chimney.
Nice work MIKE. Happy Holidays, Conrad! And likewise to all of you Crossword Fiends.
Nope. The SANTA wasn’t a big enough shove for this dullard to notice the hidden words…and here I was hoping for an easy one after 3 weeks of toughies