Ack

Here's another Wordplay-related link via the NYT forum (Tom Ratcliffe)—a Yahoo News story. Can we all agree that entertainment reporting ain't rocket science/brain surgery/the World Puzzle Championship? Why are errors so goldurned popular?

To wit: Will Shortz is "the holder of the only known Ph.D. in enigmalogy." Psst: It's enigmatology. And that's an undergraduate degree, no? And the NYT crossword's "gradual increase in difficulty [is] designed to make you feel like a superhero if you can get the Saturday one done in pen in two minutes or under." Is that so? And here I thought aiming for a sub-2:00 Monday solving time was something to shoot for. Clearly, Tyler Hinman and his ilk are mere mortals, as they're nowhere near breaking the two-minute mark on a Saturday NYT. (Also, only crossword nuts are aware that the puzzle Al Sanders tries to crack 2:00 on in the movie is a Newsday puzzle, not an NYT. And Trip's doing a puzzle in a Sterling book, I think a New York Sun collection, elsewhere in the movie.)