Not That There's Anything Wrong with That

When doing crossword puzzles--particularly those from The New York Times--you want to try to figure out the gimmick.  Once you have, the puzzle practically solves itself.

The gimmick tends to reside in the "long" answers--especially the long "Across" answers.  In the Sunday paper, the puzzle's title gives you a hint, but on the other days, you're on your own.  Sometimes, the gimmick is positively fiendish--requiring you, for example, to put multiple letters into one box or involving an answer that actually "bends" up or down.  Other times, the answers call for a pun.  Such was the case with today's puzzle.

This being a Wednesday, the puzzle was not especially difficult.  The gimmick, too, was fairly simple: The "trick" answers simply involved replacing a word ending in a 'z' or 'ze' with a homonym.  So, for example, the answer to the clue, "Heckles the Westminster Kennel Club show?" was "boos hounds"; the answer for "Entourages for Odysseus' faithful wife?" was "Penelope crews."  (Digression: In case you're not familiar with crosswords, a question mark at the end of a clue generally indicates that the answer involves a pun or other wordplay. EOD)  The final "gimmick clue" for the puzzle was, "Ricky Martin or Neil Patrick Harris?"  The answer was "star gays."

Now, both Ricky Martin and Neil Patrick Harris have been quite open about their sexuality, and to refer to them as "gay" is not in any way insulting or slanderous.  It's basically the same thing as referring to Jeremy Lin as Asian or the Solipsist as brilliant and gorgeous--it simply reflects reality.  Still, there's a difference between referring to Ricky Martin as a "gay star" and referring to him as a "star gay"--or as "a gay," period.  References to "the gays" would seem more at home among the congregants of the Saddleback Baptist Church than in the pages of The New York Times--even if the page in question contains only a crossword puzzle.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive--I would have a similar twinge if I heard someone refer to "the Jews" instead of "Jewish people."  But as a bastion of the elite liberal media, The New York Times should be careful about that kind of thing.