Typo? Or Not?

A routine I often practice after work is to sit down with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. To begin, I remove the four-page pullout section which includes the daily comics and the puzzles.

After reading the comics, I turn to the four daily puzzles. I always start with the Jumble. (Pictured was today's puzzle.) It took 2 minutes to solve today.

From there I move on to the daily crossword. I'm one those who always uses an ink pen when solving puzzles. It usually takes me about 15 minutes.

Next comes the daily Sudoku puzzle. This one takes me about 20-30 minutes.

Finally I take up the challenge of trying to solve the daily CRYPTOQUOTE puzzle. This puzzle is usually the most challenging of the four puzzles. It has at times taken an hour to solve. Sometimes I've been unsuccessful in solving them.

Unlike the other three puzzles, the answers to which appear the same day somewhere in the back of the newspaper, Cryptoquote answers do not appear until the next day underneath the new puzzle.

It is the "answer" to yesterday's Cryptoquote that inspired this post. If you are unfamiliar with this type of puzzle, I'll give a brief description of it. The answer is a quote and the author or source of the quote. The puzzle itself uses a code of substitute letters in place of the original letters.

For example:
AXYDLBAAXR = LONGFELLOW

In the example, A is substituted for the three L's, X for the two O's, etc. Single letters, apostrophes, and the length and formation of the words are clues to aid in solving the puzzle.

I'm sure that has enlightened [sic] any one reading this post.

Now to my point as suggested by the title of this post. Yesterday's solution that I arrived at was:

I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting paid for doing what you love. - Tiger Woods

When I looked at the printed answer to yesterday's puzzle, this is what appeared:

I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting laid for doing what you love. - Tiger Woods

He might be an arrogant young man, but I'm certain he would have never been publicly quoted as making the the second version of the quote.

Now these puzzles are usually syndicated features and are made available to subscribing newspapers for a fee. I don't claim to know how they are received by newspapers, but I'm sure they've proofread by the syndicators before they are made available.

So, the question is, was it a typo that resulted in an "L" being used instead of a "P" - or did some joker do it deliberately?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who caught this ... I wonder if someone is, at the very least, going to get reprimanded?

In any event, what with Tiger Woods' well documented dalliances, I couldn't help but get a good chuckle out of it - typo, or not!

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I Like jigsaw puzzles too!









№ 1968