Indie puzzles can be instructive counterexamples, often finding humor by pushing traditional taste boundaries while striving to be more culturally expansive. Will Shortz knows he can't please everyone, so he and his team try to thread the needle as best they can. Who gets to decide if an answer word is amusing or offensive? That would be the editor, and this is a game no editor can win. Let's not talk about the baseball term BEANER. Words like CANCER are avoided even though there's an anodyne astronomy meaning. (Anyone who watches the news knows that describing this as "woke" can praise or insult.) Why is it ok to see IDI AMIN in a crossword but not HITLER? It's complicated. As sensibilities adapt, we become squeamish about certain words that used to feel fine. Innovative words creep in, sex references are more common, but it's not just an expansion of acceptability. Crosswords, at least at the NYT, has always danced close to the edge between titillation and offense, and that edge changes over time as culture changes. LMFAO is clued delicately as "Electronic dance music duo," but we all know it stands for Laughing My Ass Off. ![]() I appreciate that two of the four end, not with simple adverbs, but with phrases. ![]() ![]() A Tom Swifty crossword relies on the cleverness of the answers, and these are all good. "I can't remember what I was supposed to buy here at the store," said Tom listlessly. You don't need to know that, but if you find them amusing, you can now search for lots more. The jokes in this puzzle, in case you've led a sheltered life, are called Tom Swifties. Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is trying to figure out whether NENE and ISIS are reduplicative or just duplicative.
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