[Ads-l] "chimney dirt" = newest?

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 3:20 PM, Joel Berson wrote:
>
> Today's Boston Globe crossword has Clue = chimney
> dirt, Answer = newest.
>
> Google finds a number of sites about crossword puzzles
> that assert the same answer ... but I didn't see anything
> that tells me how this equation arose.

Looks like the Globe runs a syndicated daily puzzle from Universal,
which is notorious in the crossword world for being poorly edited. I
checked with some cruciverbalist friends, and the consensus is that
the editor accidentally used a clue for SOOT and it was never
corrected. You find similar sloppiness in other Universal puzzles.

(Google results simply point back to clues/answers from the same puzzle.)

--bgz

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org