Out On A Limb?

There aren't too many people around who personally remember when Harry Truman won an unexpected victory over Thomas Dewey in the Presidential race of 1948. Just about everybody, however, remembers the story of the hapless Chicago Daily Tribune, which went to press before the polls closed and was on the streets the next morning with the banner headline "Dewey Defeats Truman."

The world of crossword aficionados may be a small one, but it is ardent, particularly when it comes to the daily puzzle in The New York Times. On Tuesday morning, seemingly showing even more hubris than The Tribune (which took the risk because of its deadline), The Times's puzzle had a clue that read "Lead story in tomorrow's paper (!)" The answer was "Clinton Elected."

What if there had been a big upset? We imagined angry Republican and superstitious Democratic crossword puzzlers descending on The New York Times en masse and, quite rightly, rending Will Shortz, the puzzle's editor, limb from unsagacious limb.

As it turned out, The Times had cunningly hedged its bets. As the next morning's solutions revealed, one could have equally well filled in "Bob Dole Elected," with an alternate set of answers in adjacent spaces to mesh with that choice. Machiavellian folks, these puzzle makers.