Today's (21 October) Washington Post crossword. Note clue #39 down. This is a tougher crossword than the Sunday stumper usually is. Haven't actually gotten that word yet.

http://crosswords.washingtonpost.com/wp ... /front.htm

If it isn't obvious, right and left mouse buttons shift the typing field from down to across and back.

Beau Geste (imported) wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:15 pm Today's (21 October) Washington Post crossword. Note clue #39 down. This is a tougher crossword than the Sunday stumper usually is. Haven't actually gotten that word yet.

http://crosswords.washingtonpost.com/wp ... /front.htm

If it isn't obvious, right and left mouse buttons shift the typing field from down to across and back.

choirboy

And the clue is....

"39. A Eunuch Opportunity?"

8 letters

Castrato

The word is "enow". Not familiar with it myself, but once you fill in the rest, that's the only thing it can be.

Met

if it was Tom Sever he was a Met if it was once or Mets if it was more than that

I eventually finished the crossword in about a half hour. The link for the puzzle page actually takes you to the current puzzle, not the 21 October one which had the clue. You have to hit the left-pointing archive arrow a few times to get to the right puzzle, the Sunday Stumper for the twenty-first.

Actual answer was "harem boy." This is interesting, because it must have been specifically put in the puzzle by its designer. The way crossword puzzles are normally designed today is something like this. The designer chooses what diagram he wants to use, then writes in a few words for which he has thought up some clever clues, or else he may write in a long quote or something which fits the diagram. Then he plugs the diagram with a few entries in it, into a crossword design program. Usually, the program takes one to five seconds to produce a finished crossword design, though it can take as long as fifteen seconds. The designer then looks over the completed design, and he may make changes if there are words in it that he doesn't like or doesn't think are appropriate for the puzzle's difficulty level. Some design programs provide clues, others don't, and the designer usually rewrites some clues even if they are provided. After he writes the clues or rewrites some, the designer submits the puzzle for publication.

What's interesting is that, unless the crossword was designed by a high-powered program I don't know about, design programs usually don't provide two-word or multiple-word entries, unless they're listed in the dictionary. "Harem boy" isn't listed in any of the dictionaries I checked. So, the designed must have put "harem boy" in before he started the program, and he must also have done it so he could use the "eunuch opportunity" clue.

As recently as ten years ago, words like eunuch were rarely or never used in puzzles or in clues--I guess crosswords were supposed to be designed so that they wouldn't offend anybody and wouldn't have any words that parents would find embarrassing to explain to their children. But now you do see some of those "awkward" words in some puzzles. I've never seen any four letter words, though. A few years ago, the clue for "harem boy" would probably have been something like "seraglio denizen."