Puzzle malaise

[tahnan]

Over at Tanga (motto: "Our puzzles don't completely suck!"), Philana wrote a puzzle involving words/phrases that start and end with A and Z (in either order). ZAMBIA, ADZ, that sort of thing.

One of the words she used was AUSCHWITZ.

I commented: "I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but I could REALLY, REALLY have done without #8 being on here. That rather seriously fails the Breakfast Table Test, and I'm actually feeling kind of rattled at having to type it in."

Someone answered by saying, "Ok let's just wipe out the word from the all languages. Erase it from all history books. Throw someone in jail for even mentioning it. Shall we also ban the words Rwanda, Twin Towers, Kamakazi, Darfur and so on? I swear, too many PC people."

That's pretty much all I've got. Not happy with Philana; not happy with that commenter; just generally ill-at-ease.

EDIT: in the comments, Tablesaw brings up a particularly useful distinction between a sensitive topic being broached and a word being dropped on you unexpectedly.

Comments

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Some days, it's good that I can light things on fire with the power of my mind.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I assume you mean "can't"? Since otherwise my ashes would be scattered around Minnesota.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

*grin* Right. Can't. :-)

[jadelennox]

Dammit.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

What? You want Tahnan's ashed to be scattered in the Canon? Or do you merely want me to be able to light things on fire with the power of my mind?

Cause I have a little list...

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

*shrug* Commenter is an idiot with no sense of context, and a petulant one at that. Had you objected to DISCUSSION of Auschwitz, his reaction might have had some kernel of justification. What you objected to is not (it appears to me) making reference to something traumatic and tragic, but doing so as recreation.

It's not forbidden; it's just not relaxing or FUN, and thus out of place as part of an entertainment such as a puzzle. Fair statement of your objection?

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the Breakfast Test. It's a general term among journalists (http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/cereal_test/), but I met it specifically in crossword (http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/mushroom/) context. (In that link, Will Shortz objects to the idea of the breakfast test, but does recognize the need to defer to "ordinary taste".)

[tablesaw]

Spoilers for the puzzle slash warning for discussing the use of the word.

I'm not particularly fond of the "breakfast test," but it's interesting that Willz compares sensitive topics to how they would be handled in the main text of the newspaper. So, I don't think I would be twigged generally by a clue of "Location of a Nazi concentration camp" in a puzzle.

But, wow, I started solving that puzzle knowing the word was in it, and I still got suckerpunched. The way it was clued, with some awkward, awkward wordplay meant that I was not nicely prepared for dealing with an unpleasant subject. Instead suddenly I've got "Auschwitz" in my head and then oh my God that's what that is in the background.

A puzzle demands that solver think in a particular way. Asking a solver to think about a particular subject can be tricky. But asking a solver to think along a particularly offensive solving path is far more dangerous.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point, actually: with many words, how they're clued is just as important as their presence at all. There's a big difference between cluing DICK as "Supposedly funny actor Andy" and "You stick it in a [insert non-NYT-safe word for 'vagina' here]", though I'm not certain I want to see references to Andy Dick in a puzzle either.

I think I agree that "Location of a Nazi concentration camp" wouldn't bother me; "It was liberated on January 27, 1945" even less so. But yeah, a big part of it here was the cluing, which here is just "you're forming a word, take the first part, put it with the second part, and do you mind if I punch you in the gut now?".

[cazique.livejournal.com]

anyone mind adding the clue here so I know what this is about? (no tanga login.)

Because I feel like a bad Jew saying this, but the mere presence of the word honestly doesn't bother me any more or less than MASSA, or ZACARIASMOUSSAOUI across the middle of a 17, or the WOMAN HITLER anagram taken ironically, or IL DUCE, or URINE would (hi Merl). (And all these bother me less, at least on a should-they-be-in-the-puzzle level, than words we identify with their initials like the N word or C word.) It sounds like context is everything here - and if what you object to is the context, you should make that clear. JMHO.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't need a Tanga login to see the puzzles, I don't think? At any rate, this is the relevant clue (http://www.tanga.com/uploaded_files/0041/5473/Pic12_crossword.jpg?1262721697).

WOMAN HITLER bothered me a lot less once I knew it was written in 1936.

[cazique.livejournal.com]

OK, I will concede that's not the ideal way to clue that word. That clears things up a bit.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

Well. Eww.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. This makes more sense now.

It's the juxtaposition of imagery that I find most disturbing, much more so than the word itself. "Enhancing Life" indeed. shudder.

I'm not easily squicked nor offended, but this is definitely... not right.

(Oh, and the commenter is clearly a dick on the face of it, even if his opinion is in itself perfectly justifiable.)

[tactical-grace.livejournal.com]

Concur with previous comments. Your reaction was polite, measured, and reasonable. The responder was...a dick.

[sylvanstargazer.livejournal.com]

Whenever someone says, "too much PC" all I hear is "how dare you ask me to think about people who differ from me!"

It isn't just another word.

When someone don't understand that words aren't always "just" words I find it's usually because they've always lived in a world designed to center and accommodate them. When I was in southern Oregon and a snippy teenager I always responded to the anti-PC garbage with, "oh, well, then you won't mind if I say X, Y and Z about Christianity/call you a "potential serial killer"/etc." Occasionally it even worked. These days I take a more direct approach typically involving saying something like, "what are you, an asshole?" My goal is no longer to make them understand or empathize, it's to get them to stop behaving that way around me. I find your polite and informative approach quite commendable.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the day the NYT puzzle crossed ELIE {Wiesel who wrote "Night"} and NAZI {"The Soup ___" (classic "Seinfeld" episode)}. I was aghast.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

I'm still amazed that Will has allowed both SWASTIKA and ETHNIC CLEANSING.

[jangler-npl.livejournal.com]

I myself am not very prone to react to such entries, and I've made some unfortunate cluing/gridding choices in that vein, but the latter entry you mentioned stopped me in my tracks when I was solving that puzzle. IIRC, the clue was so...sterile, too.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

"11D: Heinous war crime", according to Rex Parker (http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2008/06/friday-jun-6-2008-ashish-verngsarkar.html) (though someone who calls THIOL "slightly less unpleasant" isn't doing much to impress me).

Googling failed to turn up SWASTIKA as an entry (but got lots of references to black squares or highlighted words in apparent swastika-like shapes), though I admit I didn't try that hard.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

The Friday, 4/28/2000 puzzle by Joe DiPietro. (Thanks, cruciverb database!) It was actually a quote puzzle ("WHO THE HELL/WANTS TO HEAR/ACTORS TALK"), with 10D being SWASTIKA ("Hated symbol"), which ... even with that clue, I still think it's utterly out of place.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I could maybe, maybe, imagine a clue like "Ancient Hindu symbol co-opted by the Third Reich", and even then I'm not sure I'd want to see it in a puzzle.