A few short open letters

[tahnan]

Dear MBTA,

Your font is Helvetica. Every time I read a new T map that uses Arial, I die a little inside. Please stop.

Yrs, Tahnan

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Dear Will Shortz,

The entry DRWHO has been used in the crossword three times in the last five years. It is incorrect. Stop using it.

Yrs, Tahnan

Comments

nay?

[(Anonymous)]

MRED is similarly wrong, but try to get constructors to give that one up!

Coach

Re: nay?

[tahnan]

I can considering forgiving "MR. ED"; looking at the clues for it, it's almost universally clued as the character. (And kudos to Todd McClary for cluing him with the name of the actor, Bamboo Harvester.) The title of the show is "Mister Ed", but the horse himself could, I suppose, conceivably be referred to as "Mr. Ed". Maybe. But that isn't at all true for the lead role in Doctor Who, who is "the Doctor".

[colorwheel]

why is dr who wrong? is it to be spelled out doctor who? (nobody jump on me, i don't watch it.)

[tahnan]

No inclination to jump! (Well, if I'm inclined to jump on you, it's because never mind my wife is reading this.)

The program is called "Doctor Who"; it says so on the title card, on the BBC website, and so forth and so on. Spelled out, period. (In fact, since the character just goes by "the Doctor", but doesn't have any actual apparent university degree, medical or otherwise, it's particularly odd to abbreviate it, because it's not really his "title".)

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Besides, it would mean the spinoff series would have to be called Rhwod.

[rhu]

No, no. It would be "Whor'd". Which, come to think of it, it might be.

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Similarly, this is just fine for the evangelist and the Bond girl, but it is incorrect for "City on the Bay of Fundy." (Not sure about the Virgin Island, but from what I can tell it seems, like the evangelist, to be happy either way.)

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

(And, per- and conversely, this is wrong for "Newfoundland's capital.")

[tahnan]

Place names with "S(ain)t" seem to be consistently problematic. I gather from the Wikipedia article that the city on the Bay of Fundy consistently uses "Saint John" to distinguish it from "St. John's". But if you look at the website of the second-largest city in Missouri, even though it's very clearly labeled "City of St. Louis", searching the website for the word "saint" turns up plenty of references to "Saint Louis". (For example, the address of City Hall at the bottom of the page: "City of St. Louis / City Hall 1200 Market Street / Saint Louis, MO 63103". Possibly the post office doesn't recognize the proper name of the city? But there are also cases of it being spelled out in the main text. For comparison, all of the cases of "St. John" appearing on www.saintjohn.ca seem to be references to the city's namesake, to churches named after him, or to the St. John River.)

In contrast, the second-largest city in Minnesota seems to prefer "Saint Paul", but the title of the webpage is "City of St. Paul" and their website is http://www.stpaul.gov/ (and "saintpaul.gov" doesn't even exist), so while "Saint Paul" might be official, "St. Paul" seems clearly acceptable.

So, yeah, there's subtlety out there. It's up to puzzle editors to get it right.