NYT Sunday crossword yesterday. . .I don’t have it in front of me, but one of the across answers, about “rsutic furntiture material” or something, in the lower portion of the Xword was. . .
knoted [sic] pine
Am I crazy?
Was I mistaken?
AFAIK, that is not a variation on
knotted
which is what I assume they were going for.
Maybe it’s
knotty pine
I considered that.
I can’t remember the specific cross-words right now, but I think I ruled that out with like 99.99999% certainty.
The misspelling doesn’t quite qualify, but watch out for The Times and its red herring clues. I’ve taken to writing them down beside the puzzles. Some of them have had not two, but three plausible solutions. On rare occasions, two red herring answers have even crossed with each other.
If no one knows what the hell I’m talking about, I’ll go dig up some examples.
I didn’t see it myself, but a few elections ago, the NYT ran a puzzle with a cluster of clues with two possible answers. At the heart of it, a clue said something like “the winner of Tuesday’s presidential election.” With one set of answers, it came out to one candidate; with the other set, it came out to the other candidate.
This was in '00, when the possible answers were “Bush” and “Gore.” It was a truly brilliant piece of construction (and dammit, I don’t remember who did it – Bob …damn, what’s his last name, begins with a “K”…) – since each of the down clues also had to work with two possible answers as well.
Bob Klahn.
Don’t know if he’s the one who did it, but he’s the constructor I was thinking of.
[/OT]
Speaking (typing?) as one that finished that puzzle yesterday, MagicEyes has the correct answer for that particular clue.
I’d love to see that puzzle, if anybody can locate it. It sounds like one of those beautiful completed grids where you look at it and think ‘did that really happen?’
That puzzle was first published on election day 1996. You can read about it here:
Awwww…I’m afraid I’m a bit disappointed. 3 and 4 letter words shouldn’t play such a crucial role.
I know what you mean.
Yeah. I went back and looked at it.
Now feel silly.
Our local paper’s crossword lady did a real bad thing one day. She used *, yes the asterick/star/whatever symbol in her answers to substitute for the word (or word part) STAR. So, I had all these blanks in the puzzle with no way to make the words I got from the clues fit.
It finally dawned on me because of the clue that was clearly answered by Star Trek, and on;y Star Trek. I made a little five pointed criss cross star and noticed it let Trek fit in with the other answers. When I applied the same rule to the other missing words, they all fit, too. The next day, the answer key used the * symbol, instead of my hand drawn grade school star, and Iwas even slightly more annoyed by that. I guess the Symbols font wasn’t available to her.
For the last few years, tho, we’ve had a spate of guest crossword editors. Maybe she wasn’t up to the task anymore. Sure, that * bit annoyed me, but she had some great theme puzzles that, once you figured out the theme, really rocked.