The author of the longest-running crossword blog doesn't use a spell checker because, well, why bother? She's physically incapable of misspelling a word. I wonder what she thought of today's Thursday, July 3 puzzle (answers) by new constructor Keith Talon.
Back on April 27, Oliver Hill spun a dandy Sunday puzzle centered around the ten most commonly mangled words in English. Mr. Talon looks at the same problem from the point of view of the poor editor who has to deal with writers like me. The result is even more botched entries in my crossword database including an unnecessary doubled letter, an adjacent letter transposition, and a missing letter. Misspelling misspelled shows a certain cheekiness, I think. Over at cruciverb.com they take pains to remove goofy theme answers that aren't real words, so they've got some added work today.
I notice that when the theme is random mutations, the fill has to be simple to compensate. The doesn't mean it is boring. I love clues like "company founded by Ingvar Kamprad" because it's guessable just from the number of letters and the improbable sound of the name. The multi-billionaire in the photo is Mr. Kamprad and if you're reading this blog post you probably already know he founded IKEA.
How do you pronounce that chain name? The corporation has spent a lot of ad money teaching Americans to say eye-KEE-yah, but my Scandinavian friends tell me that the Swedes say something closer to EE-kay-YAH. In Old Norse it means something like green steak and eggs.
Congratulations on the fine debut, Mr. Talon.