Perplexing puzzle problems plague paper
We ran seven corrections in our Tuesday edition. One of them was among the most dreaded -- a mistake in the Crossword Puzzle.
I say among the most dreaded because, obviously, if we accidentally liable someone or make another serious error with legal implications, it is more dreaded than a puzzle mistake – but not much.
Crossword Puzzle people, and Jumble people, and Word Sleuth people are serious about their stuff. They pay attention to what’s going on, are very detail oriented, and though generally nice about it – don’t let us get away with a mistake without telling us about it. I’ve had more than one reader tell me they work such puzzles to keep their minds sharp and after speaking with them, I absolutely believe their technique is working.
There’s not much worse than walking into my office on a Monday morning encountering a lit-up telephone stacked with messages about a Crossword Puzzle error. Our Saturday paper incorrectly duplicated the Friday puzzle.
To fully correct the error would have required running the answer to the Friday puzzle, running the actual Saturday puzzle and the answers to the Saturday puzzle – along with the regular Tuesday puzzle and answers to the Monday puzzle.
With news space at a premium, we made the decision to run the answers to the Friday puzzle and just to start fresh Tuesday.
We’re back on schedule now, and doing our best not to make such mistakes that inconvenience our readers and flood our telephone lines.
I say among the most dreaded because, obviously, if we accidentally liable someone or make another serious error with legal implications, it is more dreaded than a puzzle mistake – but not much.
Crossword Puzzle people, and Jumble people, and Word Sleuth people are serious about their stuff. They pay attention to what’s going on, are very detail oriented, and though generally nice about it – don’t let us get away with a mistake without telling us about it. I’ve had more than one reader tell me they work such puzzles to keep their minds sharp and after speaking with them, I absolutely believe their technique is working.
There’s not much worse than walking into my office on a Monday morning encountering a lit-up telephone stacked with messages about a Crossword Puzzle error. Our Saturday paper incorrectly duplicated the Friday puzzle.
To fully correct the error would have required running the answer to the Friday puzzle, running the actual Saturday puzzle and the answers to the Saturday puzzle – along with the regular Tuesday puzzle and answers to the Monday puzzle.
With news space at a premium, we made the decision to run the answers to the Friday puzzle and just to start fresh Tuesday.
We’re back on schedule now, and doing our best not to make such mistakes that inconvenience our readers and flood our telephone lines.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 12:04 PM
1 Comments:
I've chose to leave my comment here since this is one of my father-in-law's favorite part of the newspaper. On December 23rd I subscribed to the Beaumont Enterprise for Victor Guarnere. He lived in the Golden Triangle for over 60 years. He now lives in Columbia Tenneessee with my wife and I. He missed the news from where he lived for so many years so I called and subscribed. Today is Jan 8th and since subscribing we have received 2 newspapers, one dated December 23rd and one dated December 28th. I have contacted your circulation department 7 different times now. I asked for a supervisor the last two days and have left a message with "Neil" with no response. I hope that someone that monitors comments can help resolve this issue. Please feel free to contact me at 713-410-6444.
Sincerely
Don Snyder
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