The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization." - Agent Smith
Dec 19, 2022Liked by NE - Naked Emperor Newsletter
Probably innocent. I doubt Will Shortz is an anti-Semite. If the puzzle creator did this deliberately, he’d know that he would never get another puzzle published anywhere, except in some Nazi publication. Why would he do that?
I’ve seen a ceiling lighting pattern of a large commercial building that accidentally ended up like that. The architect and client were both Jewish no one realized till the lights were turned on during a smoke test (fire/smoke simulation). The whole floor looked like a scene straight out of Jewish hell. Fortunately the building wasn’t opened yet and the pattern was changed before it was open to the public.
Whole buildings have been built to swastika-shaped floor plans, because the configuration obviously has advantages architects like. Then people with nothing better to do spot it, and problems ensue.
At this point, I think the architecture profession has learned to flag this issue before anything gets built. On a far more trivial scale, crossword editors could be doing the same.
I was irritated because it was a themeless puzzle on a Sunday, which is something they’ve started to do, but there was nothing wrong with the grid, though maybe they should have foreseen it would cause problems on the internet.
If you concentrate on some other aspect of the design you may not see it. Why would Ryan McCarty do this knowingly, if he knew he would be banned forever from any publication? I have yet to hear any testimony that the guy is an anti-Semite. The same goes for Will Shortz. They deny it was intentional, and I take their word for it, for now. NYT, which is certainly not an anti-Semitic publication, claims it was a coincidence that the design looks like swastika. I see no reason for them to lie about this matter. Barring some new revelation, I am assuming it was an innocent error.
The Swastika, or versions of it, has a long history. You can see them in many ancient structures (eg. popular in Ancient Greece) and if you go to Japan in many not so ancient structures as I'm sure you can in India as well (I've never been). So it is possible that they form easily in our minds but then if so why was this pattern not recognized by someone before publication?
I don’t know. All I can say is that there is no evidence that either creator or editor appears to be anti-Semitic. And NYT is anything but anti-Semitic. I detest the quick condemnation of people, usually followed by calls for their dismissal. I find this more dangerous to us than theoretically letting a anti-Semite get away with a one off anti-Semitic remark.
Everything done by the mainstream is calculated. What even more interesting the family who owns the paper is Jewish, the Sulzberger family. Nothing is what it seems and you must question everything. Trust nothing.
Dec 20, 2022Liked by NE - Naked Emperor Newsletter
This is tantamount to a "fact check" by the Trusted News Initiative concluding that vaccines are indeed safe and effect. The widespread view among conservatives, as well as even left-wing Jews, is that the NY Times is anti-Israel.
Thanks for the gracious reply. Unrelated, I really value the information you put out there on several fronts, including health-related. I credit you, for example, for convincing me to do a CAC. Was excited to see score was 0!
Dec 19, 2022Liked by NE - Naked Emperor Newsletter
time to start ignoring the nyt. that rag is obviously and forever been a joke. by posting their crap you only help their public image/presence. new alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLM OPQRS UVWX Z.
Dec 19, 2022Liked by NE - Naked Emperor Newsletter
What was has been lost. What is seems to scream evil. Happy Festivus seems more appropriate. The insults from our arrogant journalistic cabal require a response, like maybe stop reading a paper that insults it’s paying customers?
So I have a New York Times puzzle account, and I was curious. I don't know what they use to design the grid, but this one and the one before they designed a quarter of the grid and then just kept turning it 90 degrees to fill the other three quarters of the puzzle. That was this one and the Sunday puzzle for December 11th. I looked back four weeks before that, and each Sunday the top half of the grid and the bottom half were mirrors of each other, so whatever they used to design the grid, they just designed the top and then flipped it to finish the puzzle. I didn't go back further than that.
A swastika is simply one quarter repeatedly turned ninety degrees until a larger square emerges out of the repeating quarter. (You do this all the time in quilting with a lot of patterns.)
That's a long way to saying this is probably a mistake, and I say this for two reasons: (1) it's just way too obvious for those who know what a swastika is, and (2) many people don't know what a swastika is (and to be fair, the Nazis coopted it--it was a benign religious symbol before they got their genocidal hands on it). I would suggest that a chunk of millennials and zoomers have no idea what that symbol represents for certain groups. We don't teach that history in school. We're much more into "critical race theory" and the teaching of "noose" history than "swastika" history, and this lack of knowledge is a result of the zero-sum game of "victimhood." Some victims are going to win out and others are going to become invisible. *shrug* That's what happens, you know, when you get caught up in that mindset.
But having said all that, the New York Times is absolutely wonderful at twisting things and ruining lives (remember the scientist that lost his job for daring to be the wrong skin color and utter the n-word to explain what it meant? Yeah, me too.). So I say, "Karma's a bitch."
Sun-wheels of all kinds date back to many many thousands of years before even the founding of Troy. As does celtic and germanic interlocking patterns, triskelions, and so on-all over the world.
A picture truly does speak a thousand words. The Nazis have been broadcasting that they still live amongst us, and will continue their atrocities unless they are stopped by human or divine intervention.
Portmanteau=suitcase. Occupy as a booth=feast of booths. Loch=lock (hair). Peevish AND peevish display. White teeth=dentures. Boxcar. Bunk=bunk. I'm in heaven (twice). Sand, silt and clay=loam (for making bricks). Earthenware etc.=firepot (!!!).
Sith shows up in Ezekiel 35:6, see Darth Sidious in the puzzle. Apparently that’s what he was. I confess that I have almost zero interest in anything Star Wars...Then read that passage in the Bible. This is a rabbit hole that may take all freaking day!
They employed 30,000 prisoners from Auschwitz. They were also involved in providing chemicals for the camps. I’d say this is not a joke. Some sort of message, maybe Ukrainian Diaspora involved. Be careful where you go in NY.
I did the whole puzzle in the print edition without noticing. Now you might be saying that’s because I’m an idiot, and you might have a point, but I don’t think I’m significantly more idiotic than the Times editors (especially the lazy puzzle editor). So if I failed to see it, why couldn’t they?
On an independent NYT crossword puzzle blog, the highly woke blogger (also definitely an idiot) didn’t see it, though some of the commenters did.
Obviously a mistake – by an organization that would gladly pounce on anyone politically disfavored who did something similar. Be better than them!
Of all the days to make a mistake - very unlucky! And you think the crossword designer who spent hours looking at the design, failed to see what he created?
As a graphic designer I can say 100% you can stare at the most glaring errors and they can be proofed by multiple people and published - the brain is very good at editing the perceived reality.
But this specific issue has arisen before, and at the Times. Because what you say is true (I solved the puzzle without seeing it), by now they could just have a “so does this resemble a swastika?” step built into the editing process. I think if they had, this one would have jumped out.
Well, again I think laziness and stupidity have a lot of explanatory power in human affairs – most definitely including the NYT puzzle page.
Just a few Sundays ago, there were multiple cluing errors – one in the main crossword, and several in one of the variety puzzles – and that kind of sloppiness is getting more common. There is no sign the Sunday Magazine or newspaper editors care.
The twerp that edits the puzzles has been on the job for too long, but the idea of him doing something like this on purpose is ridiculous. The puzzle author is one of their regulars, and while it’s amusing to think of him trying to put one over on the editor, it’s also absurd to think he’s been cultivating the Times all these years just to slip something like that in.
Speaking as a regular solver, I’ll be interested to see if this (to me) non-issue has consequences there, when all the routine bad editing hasn’t.
Did anyone ask him directly about his puzzle? Maybe his puzzle is submitted via email, and his outbox sent his mail to someone who attached this Nazi puzzle in place of his puzzle, and then let it go? The guys in the press room would not catch it. It would be good to ask for an explanation, because I see a lot of issues with it, and I only spent a few minutes looking at the puzzle and the clues. I saw the first holocaust reference before I saw the Nazi symbol actually.
I already copped to not being too bright, but here’s something you didn’t spot: 41 Across anagrams to “Nazi hope x.” (crosswords are sometimes abbreviated x-words, btw)
I include that to demonstrate I’m smart enough to find it, and you’re stupid enough to think it’s significant.
This is not an accident.
And that would one weird shaped crossword if it was ...
That must have taken a *lot* of effort to get the sides to line up so perfectly. I struggle to see how it could be anything but deliberate.
Here is a clue for those who can’t see..
“Knock, Knock”
“Who’s there”
***SMACK***
“VEEE VILL ASK ZEE QVESTIONS”
They're showing their solidarity with Ukraine and Zelensky...just sayin...
Clearly their lack of editorial integrity extends to their crossword page. Disgusting.
67 Across "Joke that goes over the line"
Probably way over
I believe NYC has the largest community of Jews ANYWHERE - more than Jerusalem, or any city in Israel..
Happy Hanukkah!
It took me a while to see it -- and then I did.
Guide for the Perplexed: Look close at the puzzle itself and not the clues.
Wish I had seen your comment before spending g 15 minutes examining each clue. :)
Every day offers more proof we're in some kind of farcical simulation.....
Farcical? How insulting!
New writers are needed....
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization." - Agent Smith
If I call you Morpheus will my phone suddenly ring?
There's only one way to find out.
Not the puzzle! That's the ONLY good thing coming out of the NY Times.
Which begs the question: intentional or an oversight?
NYT readers: "Please poke us in the eye some more!"
Probably innocent. I doubt Will Shortz is an anti-Semite. If the puzzle creator did this deliberately, he’d know that he would never get another puzzle published anywhere, except in some Nazi publication. Why would he do that?
How do you do this on accident?
I’ve seen a ceiling lighting pattern of a large commercial building that accidentally ended up like that. The architect and client were both Jewish no one realized till the lights were turned on during a smoke test (fire/smoke simulation). The whole floor looked like a scene straight out of Jewish hell. Fortunately the building wasn’t opened yet and the pattern was changed before it was open to the public.
Whole buildings have been built to swastika-shaped floor plans, because the configuration obviously has advantages architects like. Then people with nothing better to do spot it, and problems ensue.
At this point, I think the architecture profession has learned to flag this issue before anything gets built. On a far more trivial scale, crossword editors could be doing the same.
This one comes to mind.
https://aninjusticemag.com/navy-swastika-in-san-diego-b336dd4549b4
https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-times-speaks-out-claims-its-crossword-resembles-swastika-1768153
I was irritated because it was a themeless puzzle on a Sunday, which is something they’ve started to do, but there was nothing wrong with the grid, though maybe they should have foreseen it would cause problems on the internet.
I agree, and assume if they had caught it they wouldn’t have had it published.
A lot is in the eye of the beholder:
See
https://pixy.org/4578553/
What do you see? It is entirely possible that the creator of this puzzle saw something different.
LOL this is not an optical illusion.
If you concentrate on some other aspect of the design you may not see it. Why would Ryan McCarty do this knowingly, if he knew he would be banned forever from any publication? I have yet to hear any testimony that the guy is an anti-Semite. The same goes for Will Shortz. They deny it was intentional, and I take their word for it, for now. NYT, which is certainly not an anti-Semitic publication, claims it was a coincidence that the design looks like swastika. I see no reason for them to lie about this matter. Barring some new revelation, I am assuming it was an innocent error.
The Swastika, or versions of it, has a long history. You can see them in many ancient structures (eg. popular in Ancient Greece) and if you go to Japan in many not so ancient structures as I'm sure you can in India as well (I've never been). So it is possible that they form easily in our minds but then if so why was this pattern not recognized by someone before publication?
They are used on maps to signify temples in Japan
I don’t know. All I can say is that there is no evidence that either creator or editor appears to be anti-Semitic. And NYT is anything but anti-Semitic. I detest the quick condemnation of people, usually followed by calls for their dismissal. I find this more dangerous to us than theoretically letting a anti-Semite get away with a one off anti-Semitic remark.
Very very interesting.
Everything done by the mainstream is calculated. What even more interesting the family who owns the paper is Jewish, the Sulzberger family. Nothing is what it seems and you must question everything. Trust nothing.
NY Times is anti-Israel, not pro-Israel. It's a typical left-wing rang.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1081180X03256999
This is tantamount to a "fact check" by the Trusted News Initiative concluding that vaccines are indeed safe and effect. The widespread view among conservatives, as well as even left-wing Jews, is that the NY Times is anti-Israel.
Ok thanks, happy to be fact checked on issues I'm not up to date with. That's what I'm here for!
Thanks for the gracious reply. Unrelated, I really value the information you put out there on several fronts, including health-related. I credit you, for example, for convincing me to do a CAC. Was excited to see score was 0!
Wrong Emperor I think!
Funny, I was thinking of the Fat Emperor! Ivor Cummins.
Wow, that’s weird. Esp since so many Jews are liberal Dumocrats....
Is that real or fake?
Come on, you don't come here for fake news!
The times was hijacked by a far right nationalist, who printed it without anyone noticing.
Fixed.
time to start ignoring the nyt. that rag is obviously and forever been a joke. by posting their crap you only help their public image/presence. new alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLM OPQRS UVWX Z.
What was has been lost. What is seems to scream evil. Happy Festivus seems more appropriate. The insults from our arrogant journalistic cabal require a response, like maybe stop reading a paper that insults it’s paying customers?
Cripes!
7 Down is "Syd" :)
Impossible for this to be a coincidence
Under the design of the puzzle we have
#38 “Boxcars”.
If you want to play "hidden messages", look at 88 (!) Down.
once you see it, you cannot un-see it
true for so many things that happened last 3Y
God made us free and we shall be. F**k the nazis
So I have a New York Times puzzle account, and I was curious. I don't know what they use to design the grid, but this one and the one before they designed a quarter of the grid and then just kept turning it 90 degrees to fill the other three quarters of the puzzle. That was this one and the Sunday puzzle for December 11th. I looked back four weeks before that, and each Sunday the top half of the grid and the bottom half were mirrors of each other, so whatever they used to design the grid, they just designed the top and then flipped it to finish the puzzle. I didn't go back further than that.
A swastika is simply one quarter repeatedly turned ninety degrees until a larger square emerges out of the repeating quarter. (You do this all the time in quilting with a lot of patterns.)
That's a long way to saying this is probably a mistake, and I say this for two reasons: (1) it's just way too obvious for those who know what a swastika is, and (2) many people don't know what a swastika is (and to be fair, the Nazis coopted it--it was a benign religious symbol before they got their genocidal hands on it). I would suggest that a chunk of millennials and zoomers have no idea what that symbol represents for certain groups. We don't teach that history in school. We're much more into "critical race theory" and the teaching of "noose" history than "swastika" history, and this lack of knowledge is a result of the zero-sum game of "victimhood." Some victims are going to win out and others are going to become invisible. *shrug* That's what happens, you know, when you get caught up in that mindset.
But having said all that, the New York Times is absolutely wonderful at twisting things and ruining lives (remember the scientist that lost his job for daring to be the wrong skin color and utter the n-word to explain what it meant? Yeah, me too.). So I say, "Karma's a bitch."
Hear hear!
Sun-wheels of all kinds date back to many many thousands of years before even the founding of Troy. As does celtic and germanic interlocking patterns, triskelions, and so on-all over the world.
it's the special "support Ukraine" edition
Aren't you doing that enough already?
In 1386, 8000 Jews died in what is now Toledo, Spain, in the siege of Henry of Trastamara. This is all strictly coincidental.
I had no idea a MAGA group ran the NY Times
OMG.
Did you see Boxcars?
Would be funny if the answer was "Pfizer"...
A picture truly does speak a thousand words. The Nazis have been broadcasting that they still live amongst us, and will continue their atrocities unless they are stopped by human or divine intervention.
If you subtract the NY Hotels, does anyone actually still read the NY Slimes?
You gotta be BLIND not to see it
Plus the title is right there to back it up. Tell me we are not in spiritual warfare now.
That is fucking spiteful
lol wut?
Portmanteau=suitcase. Occupy as a booth=feast of booths. Loch=lock (hair). Peevish AND peevish display. White teeth=dentures. Boxcar. Bunk=bunk. I'm in heaven (twice). Sand, silt and clay=loam (for making bricks). Earthenware etc.=firepot (!!!).
So, are the Jews collaborating with the Nazis to form one world gov't? there's a rabbit hole for you!
Holy sh-t, lmao. Hitler lives within the NYT and he likely wants you to get another booster.
Toletum, established by a group of Jewish travelers 5th Century BC. See El Greco’s painting “View of Toledo”. It is in the Metro Museum of Art, NYC.
No fucken way...😖😖
Sith shows up in Ezekiel 35:6, see Darth Sidious in the puzzle. Apparently that’s what he was. I confess that I have almost zero interest in anything Star Wars...Then read that passage in the Bible. This is a rabbit hole that may take all freaking day!
They employed 30,000 prisoners from Auschwitz. They were also involved in providing chemicals for the camps. I’d say this is not a joke. Some sort of message, maybe Ukrainian Diaspora involved. Be careful where you go in NY.
Answer RPI, located in the US home of Bayer... I guess I could keep going but I think there is a Nazi involved and there is no coincidence
I did the whole puzzle in the print edition without noticing. Now you might be saying that’s because I’m an idiot, and you might have a point, but I don’t think I’m significantly more idiotic than the Times editors (especially the lazy puzzle editor). So if I failed to see it, why couldn’t they?
On an independent NYT crossword puzzle blog, the highly woke blogger (also definitely an idiot) didn’t see it, though some of the commenters did.
Obviously a mistake – by an organization that would gladly pounce on anyone politically disfavored who did something similar. Be better than them!
Of all the days to make a mistake - very unlucky! And you think the crossword designer who spent hours looking at the design, failed to see what he created?
As a graphic designer I can say 100% you can stare at the most glaring errors and they can be proofed by multiple people and published - the brain is very good at editing the perceived reality.
But this specific issue has arisen before, and at the Times. Because what you say is true (I solved the puzzle without seeing it), by now they could just have a “so does this resemble a swastika?” step built into the editing process. I think if they had, this one would have jumped out.
Well, again I think laziness and stupidity have a lot of explanatory power in human affairs – most definitely including the NYT puzzle page.
Just a few Sundays ago, there were multiple cluing errors – one in the main crossword, and several in one of the variety puzzles – and that kind of sloppiness is getting more common. There is no sign the Sunday Magazine or newspaper editors care.
The twerp that edits the puzzles has been on the job for too long, but the idea of him doing something like this on purpose is ridiculous. The puzzle author is one of their regulars, and while it’s amusing to think of him trying to put one over on the editor, it’s also absurd to think he’s been cultivating the Times all these years just to slip something like that in.
Speaking as a regular solver, I’ll be interested to see if this (to me) non-issue has consequences there, when all the routine bad editing hasn’t.
Did anyone ask him directly about his puzzle? Maybe his puzzle is submitted via email, and his outbox sent his mail to someone who attached this Nazi puzzle in place of his puzzle, and then let it go? The guys in the press room would not catch it. It would be good to ask for an explanation, because I see a lot of issues with it, and I only spent a few minutes looking at the puzzle and the clues. I saw the first holocaust reference before I saw the Nazi symbol actually.
Agreed - you are an idiot... and an apologist. Impossible for the design to be so well balanced and have some of the clues it has and be a mistake.
The anti-Semites and neo-nazis will frame this one and keep it for posterity.
I already copped to not being too bright, but here’s something you didn’t spot: 41 Across anagrams to “Nazi hope x.” (crosswords are sometimes abbreviated x-words, btw)
I include that to demonstrate I’m smart enough to find it, and you’re stupid enough to think it’s significant.