Display latest post from Wordpress Featured Category that is also in X,Y,or Z categories

Question

I want to display the latest post from a "featured" category (id=1) that may also be in either X category, Y category, or Z category (id=2,3,4 respectively). Note, there are other posts in categories (A,B) that may also be listed under "featured" but I want to limit my results to the XYZ set.

Is there any special loop I can use to achieve this, or do I need to run a SQL query?

Also important to know that these are all top-level categories, so no child or parent cats to look through.

Answer 1

Maybe this could help and should return any post either in 2, 3 or 4 category AND in categoery 1 :

query_posts( array( 'cat' => array(2,3,4), 'category__and' => 1, 'posts_per_page' => 1, 'orderby' => 'title', 'order' => 'DESC' ) );

(from codex http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/query_posts)

Not quite sure, haven't tested it.

Answer 2

how about?

<?php 
$temp = $wp_query;
$wp_query= null;
$wp_query = new WP_Query();
$wp_query->query('cat=1,2,3,4&showposts=5');

if ( have_posts() ) while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
while ($wp_query->have_posts()) : $wp_query->the_post();
?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>
  <div class="entry-content">
    <span class="blog-date"><?php the_time(' M  jS, Y') ?></span>
      <h2 class="blog-post-title">
        <?php the_title(); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php the_content(); ?>
  </div><!-- .entry-content -->
</div><!-- #post-## -->
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php 
 $wp_query = null; 
 $wp_query = $temp; 
?>

really just a custom query, which you can still filter to show number of posts etc..