Grid: 15 minutes; Meta: 15 more
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “End Products” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a four-letter word. There were four long theme entries:
- JUM(P)TH(E)GU(N): [Act prematurely]
- BEAT(S)T(O)(A)PUL(P): [Thrashes severely]
- SE(A)LEVE(L)RIS(E): [It’s estimated to be a foot in the next 25 years]
- KUN(G)F(U)FIL(M): [1972’s “Fist of Fury,” e.g.]
WSJ Contest – 02.28.2025
I spun my wheels for a bit, trying to find a signal from JN or JUUN (the left and right ends of the first themer). Nothing there. Then I noticed that each theme entry was comprised of multiple words, and I focused on the end of each. Bingo: I had the rabbit. The end of each theme word formed a word that mapped to another grid entry. Here they are in mapped order:
- DIA(L) -> SOAP
- EXTR(A) -> GUM
- BAS(S) -> ALE
- PILO(T) -> PEN
Fittingly: the last letter of the mapped entries spell our contest solution LAST. Yet another surgical meta by Mike, with very impressive construction. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Solvers: please share your thoughts.
The A in SEA should be circled rather than the first L in LEVEL.
Fixed, thanks!
There are four X’s in the puzzle and I got stuck in this red herring… Thought that “products” in the title were multiplication products.
Good puzzle, duped me.
100% same.
I like this one! Typical Mike Shenk- surgically precise!!!
Never heard of Extra gum or Pilot pen. Got nowhere.
EXPO is also a pen (dry erase markers)…
I spotted the helpful grid clue in 7 Down, “Gerund ender,” then four clues with an “-ing” word: “pitching,” “forging,” “investing,” and “recording.” “Pitching” without the “ing” seemed an alternate answer to “goo” for 58 Down, but potential alternate answers for the other three words were less clean. On Sunday afternoon, I finally spotted the words formed by the last letters of the multi-word answers, matched them to brand name products and then. . . went back to the clues!!! BASS, DIAL, PILOT, and EXTRA have clues ending with letters that spell “heel,” as in the heel on each end of a loaf of bread. Click! The order of the products in the grid wasn’t perfect, but supportive, from the far left to the far right. I came on Crosswordfiend this morning to bask a while longer only to find I’d made a detour right before the finish line.
After completing the grid, my first thought was to use the endings of the themers to substitute for other things in the puzzle and “topful” stood out as weird and could be “Top Gun?” But the only other thing that worked was “sun rise.” So I put it down again until early evening Sunday. Mike is usually literal and then I saw the “end products” of pen, soap, ale and gum. Then I spotted “Dial” and searched for the remaining product names. The last letter of each spelled “LAST” in grid order. Yay!
I found Dial, Bass, and Pilot quickly, but was stumped on Gum. Then I found that there was a liquid-filled gum called Edge. However, I could not spell anything with L-S-T-E that made sense. Then after looking at the grid further, I saw Era, and looked it up, and found a gum-soled shoe by Vans that was called Era Gums. I went with it and figured out Last, even though the letters were in a seemingly random order, which seemed odd. So I submitted the correct answer, without ever finding Extra.
I took a different rabbit hole:
The end product of each as follows:
“Jump the gun”—Slow up, or sped (both start with an s)
“Beats to a pulp”—I give (would be the ultimate end)
“Sea level rise”—Topful (in which case the clue now made sense) and finally
“Kung fu Film”—Part VI(they all seem to have multiple sequels and it justifies this clue)
Take the first letters, anagram them, and you get:PITS which is itself an end product.
I particularly liked how the first word of the title helped me with step one and the second word helped me with step two. Great meta!