Sunday NYT puzzle

[tahnan]

A question about one of the entries in the 3/8/09 puzzle:

"BUILT RAMPS TOUGH"? "Built Ford Tough" is familiar to me as an advertising slogan, but "Built Ram Tough" seems to be mostly on the web as a parody. Is that actually also a phrase, or did Kushner and Shortz screw up?

Comments

[selinker.livejournal.com]

"Ram Tough" is definitely a slogan for Dodge. The "Built" is very shaky, though. it's like a back-formation from another slogan. I think they screwed up.

[darth-laura.livejournal.com]

"Built Ram tough" is a phrase Dodge uses lightly in their own literature (I found a PDF brochure online that used it a couple of times), and I seem to remember very vaguely some commercials from years ago that used it ("Dodge trucks...built ram tough!"), but it seems like the actual slogan is in fact just "RAM Tough." [sic] "Built" appears to just be a word they're using when the two word slogan needs clarification in context or information added to it.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Cool. I think that makes it something short of "outright error" and something closer to "not a particularly good entry".