The Anatomy of an Error as a Puzzler

Have you done this week's crosswords?

Manage newsletters The Daily Beast Crossword is where power, pop culture, and politics intersect—quite literally.   Designed to be more challenging throughout the week, you can test your knowledge with five puzzles each week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. Play This Week's Puzzles Get in the Game With Matt Gaffney Last Monday, a solver tweeted this @ me.   Uh-oh! 9-Down was MEL BROOKS, the iconic funnyman who turned 95 years old on Monday, and 4-Down was the PRODUCERS, his famous play.    Everyone knows Mel Brooks starred in the 1967 film version of The Producers, right? Except not. He wrote and directed it, but the lead role of Max Bialystok was played by Zero Mostel, not by Brooks.    I hadn't looked it up when editing the puzzle. Why not? Because I "knew" it, so I didn't need to look it up! This misguided certainty is a common cause of crossword errors—something sounds so right that the puzzle writer lets their guard down and fails to make sure. Brooks is so strongly identified with The Producers that, despite having never seen the original film, I didn't think it warranted double-checking. Mistake!    And when a crossword writer makes a mistake, we hear about it. We've stumped solvers so many times that they can't wait to zing us back! It's a certainty we'll hear from them, as surely as Albuquerque is the capital of New Mexico, Whiplash being the Best Picture of 2014, and Yao Ming being the tallest player in NBA history.   Oh, wait...   Find an error? Tweet it to me @beastxword and I'll correct! Play This Week's Puzzles © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC  555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011  Privacy Policy If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can safely unsubscribe.