[Ads-l] grammatical diversity in the NYT crossword

Joel Berson berson at ATT.NET
Mon Mar 27 14:53:06 UTC 2017


Spoiler alert -- do not read if you still have the puzzle to do.

Wilson, a little more than 18 Across.  Take a second look at the answer to 39 Across.  I hads to before I got it completely.

Joel


      From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Monday, March 27, 2017 3:12 AM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] grammatical diversity in the NYT crossword
   
"ALLS I KNOW, which is a casual form of ALL I KNOW."

Is that right? It’s not a feature of some dialects?

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 11:07 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Monday's New York Times crossword is the handiwork of Tom McCoy, an
> undergraduate member of the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project. I
> wouldn't've thought it possible, but he's managed to make a coherent
> theme out of a nonstandard grammatical variant in American English. I
> won't spoil it for people who want to solve it, but you can read the
> constructor's notes on the NYT's Wordplay blog:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/26/crosswords/police-
> operation-ngram-rubber-grammarian.html
>
> And you can see the clues and completed grid on XWord Info:
>
> http://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/27/2017
>
> Bonus: One clue mentions Google Ngrams, surely a first for the Times.
>
> --bgz
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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

   

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



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