NYT Claims Swastika Shaped Crossword on Eve of Hanukkah is a ‘Common’ Design
Two clues were “Boxcars” and “Brandenburg Gate.”
The New York Times Sunday crossword resembled a swastika. Sunday morning was also the eve of the first day of Hanukkah. (It officially started Sunday evening.)
One clue was “Boxcars.” Another clue was “Brandenburg Gate.” The latter has been the backdrop during many historic moments, including the Nazis and Hitler.
You see the design, and the first clue is, “I’m in heaven!”
This is the NYTimes crossword puzzle today on the first day of Hanukka.
What the hell, @nytimes? pic.twitter.com/kNBs8RjyJJ
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) December 18, 2022
Oh so this has happened before https://t.co/RUbiygMgHD
— Blake Flayton (@blakeflayton) December 19, 2022
@michcoll also 60 across is a question about the Brandenburg Gate, read up about its history, too much here to be a coincidence. https://t.co/ubHgkFME5D
— Alex Funaro (@Cadyfatcat) December 19, 2022
“Boxcars” and “Brandenburg Gate” are two clues back-to-back in the middle of the swastika design in the @nytimes crossword puzzle. Bro, are you fucking kidding me?? pic.twitter.com/tcaoD2PpF2
— Henrock (@BCHenrock) December 19, 2022
The New York Times defended the puzzle:
Despite the online speculation, Jordan Cohen, executive director of communications at the Times, told Newsweek that the only intentional aspect of the crossword’s appearance was its symmetry.
“This is a common crossword design: Many open grids in crosswords have a similar spiral pattern because of the rules around rotational symmetry and black squares,” Cohen said in a statement.
I wonder what the crossword will look like and what clues it will have on Sunday, which is Christmas.
The NY Times has a history of bashing Israel. Remember the anti-Semitic cartoon in 2019?
The day before, the NY Times editorial board went after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming Israel’s democracy was in danger under him.
Followed by a swastika crossword puzzle the next day. https://t.co/uL0LW3pFHy
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) December 18, 2022
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Comments
Geesh, the NYT never gives credit. This puzzle first appeared in Der Stürmer,
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51VdZgdp8wL._AC_SY780_.jpg
Liars, damn liars, and Izvestia on the Hudson that prints its views as if the news.
According to Pew Research, Jews comprise 2.4% of the USA population, and of that 2.4% roughly 2/3rds consider themselves religious Jews.
Imho, outside of NYC, no one cares about Hanukkah. It’s Merry Christmas Season, not ‘hApPy HoLiDaYs.’
That said, even I find this puzzle to be atrociously bad form by this former newspaper.
The newspaper on record.
Chanukah is a significant event not just in NYC but in the entire Boston-Washington corridor, out west as far as Chicago, in southern Florida, and in southern California. Elsewhere, not so much.
The actual percent of practing Jew is closer to 15%. Considering oneself religious or observant is very different from being religious or observant.
Chanukah is one of the few Jewish holidays that a lot of non-religious Jews claim to celebrate. This is ironic given that the holiday commemorates the survival of Torah Judaism over the Greeks and their assimilated Jewish allies who tried to end it, under penalty of death. And what they celebrate is a watered down holiday that has little in common with actual Chanukah. But celebrate it they do, so the greeting is relevant to them.
Getting agitated about minutia like this is mostly what liberals do to keep their outrage levels stoked.
But hey… go ahead and pretend this is a thing, right along with all those hoax hate crimes the right is accused of promoting.
Every group has some who see their own version of a rope garage door pull.
I’m a lot more concerned about the NYT’s content than I am about the shape of their crossword puzzle.
This is its content. What part of that don’t you understand?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Agreed, though the NYT is likely to combine the two.
This is its content. What part of that don’t you understand?
This was intended to reply to ahad, not MSFM.
If I buy a NYT subscription, does it come with a free membership to Stormfront?
A lifetime subscription will last about 12 months. It comes with a guarantee that you will get no money back.
I never thought I would live to see the day when the NYT I actually in league with real white supremacists while thinking they are the vanguard of antiracism.
I stumbled across that sight when looking for screen savers, signed up and downloaded several really nice landscape pictures. Then I read some of the forums and posts……On the plus side, they send me a happy birthday every year. 😉
If this were another politically represented minority group, there would be mounds of apologies and heads would roll rather than excuses.
Unless told about it, I’d not have noticed the pattern.
Exactly. You have to be looking for reasons to take offense in order to see it. And with the NYT there are so many clear and obvious reasons that it boggles the mind that anyone would have to reach for this one.
That is so true. I read hundreds of comments on LI every day and see nothing wrong, but a certain poster comes along and nit picks the shit out of everything.
When someone showed me this yesterday en route to Chevron, I thought he was joking. Wasn’t there a similar flap some years back when a Muslim group claimed that the swirl atop the photo of some hamburger chain’s ice cream cone spelled out Allah (or was in Muhamad) in Arabic, and the chain quickly apologized and changed it?
Although the contrast in response to the two incidents is instructive.
Jumped right out at me but maybe it was because I read this story first so was expecting it? I see patterns very quickly, anyways.
And I saw it instantly without being told about it.
Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt that they have done nothing to deserve.
This isn’t like ‘oh hey if you turn it on this side then it kind of looks like it’.
This is a perfectly symmetrical pattern. It took EFFORT to make this pattern. And if they’re claiming it isn’t a swastika, then they need to be saying what they THOUGHT it looked like when they made it.
You don’t ‘accidentally’ make a perfectly symmetrical pattern that includes a swastika.
And, I do NOT see patterns right away. Those strange posters with the buried images that were a dad 30 years ago never revealed their visages to me.
So, sue me, counselor.
Images…
“This is a perfectly symmetrical pattern. It took EFFORT to make this pattern.”
I have come to assume the vast majority of crosswords are all computer-generated today.
That’s kinda the point though. Other groups are allowed to find reasons to be offended.
They can not only do this with impunity but they are congratulated, touted as brave, and showered with apologies and concessions.
You have to imagine Jordan Peterson calling these Q n As in his Kermit-Hitler voice presiding over a team crossword game, like in a bingo hall.
Clearly, it’s coded signaling. Also, keep an eye out for the Bennington Ad Cast in Khakis w/ tiki torches. Perhaps that’s another of the clues.
Fun aside, the game is to so encrust someone with spin, interpretation, and reaction that they “spend all their life, just a coverin up.”
— If it ain’t a slogan from the latest The Two Minutes Hate, it’s bad and wrong.
— If there’s a way to spin it into an accusation let the struggle session begin.
— Once accused, they are discredited and suspect forevermore, and their family onto the 7th generation.
There is no defense, other than being the accuser, not the accused. So, J’accuse — I win. We’re all playing by Uncle Saul’s rules, now.
This is more proof that the NYT has a “Jewish problem” that has been festering since the late 1800s
Getting bent out of shape over this puzzle just draws attention away from the NYT content, which IS worth getting bent out of shape over.
A Nazi or a Dezi, perhaps a TransNazi or a Glozi. The common reference of the NYT style guide, includes: abortion chambers, [rabid] diversity, redistributive change, and swastikas out of the back… black hole… whore h/t NAACP. Oh, they would like to sequester the “burden” h/t Obama… uh, burden. Time will tell.
Oh, please. This is exactly like those people who see nooses everywhere.
Also, the Brandenberg Gate is an important site in Berlin, at which all kinds of important events regularly take place. Just because Hitler once had a rally there doesn’t mean a normal person automatically associates it with him.
And “boxcars”?! Srsly?! What kind of person hears “boxcars” and immediately thinks “holocaust”? “Cattle cars” maybe, but “boxcars”?! That’s a sign of obsession.
I hear “Box car” I think of three things:
A method of moving packaged freight over rails
Something to do with dice
A story I heard in elementary school: The Boxcar Children
…and Boxcar Willie.
Individually it might have been brushed off.
When put together with the pattern you’re actually going to give them the benefit of the doubt that this is just a stunning ‘coincidence’?
I don’t give the NYT a single solitary thing. But, I also don’t go to great efforts to find connections.
Example. My paternal grandparents were Austrian and spoke German. It didn’t tie them to Hitler.
You’re reaching. The swastika speaks for itself.
This incident aside, I’m in support of reclaiming the swastika as a legitimate holy symbol, which is what it was (and, still is) for thousands of years in Hinduism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism, before the German National Socialists stole it in a blasphemous and exploitative act, to use as an icon representing their “Aryan” roots.
We can be smart enough to recognize the National Socialists’ evil appropriation of the swastika, while simultaneously recognizing that it has legitimate and innocuous usage in many faiths.
I may have previously posted this photo of a Kaibab Paiute vest and gauntlet we encountered at Pipe Spring National Monument earlier this year. The case for independent genesis and derivation of this simple symbol is undeniable.
Of course, once the socialists have appropriated ANY symbol, term, or image, it inherits a permanent purulence that stains every former user of that item. Note how the respectable term “liberal” (as in “Adam Smith”) has been permanently befouled.
Absolutely impossible that this design was random. And it is NOT a freq
Absolutely impossible that this design was random. And it is NOT a frequenty used design. The Gray Lady is a b*&%# and an anti-semite to boot. NYC Jews must feel so special.
It’s fun to joke, and make outrageous accusations that your enemies can’t counter, but it’s indisputable that The NY Times is heavily disproportionately Jewish, although of the secular and liberal/leftist type, as prone to being overly pro-Jewish as they are to being pro-Palestinian, and pro-BIPOC Woke, to the point of being anti-Semitic
If this is merely accident or coincidence, should be very easy to prove: where are the similar crossword templates from the past. Why hasn’t the NYTimes simply pulled out a few of them.
I remember when Radar looked into Col. Blake’s ear and said he saw a little nativity scene in there.
It’s fun, and appropriate, to make the Left play by its own rules, and give them a taste of their own medicine, but if we take it too far it amounts to accepting their rules, and their medicine, things I will never do.
The grid looks vaguely like a swastika, and so what? Briefly roast The NY Times, and move on.