Solution to Evan Birnholz’s Jan. 31 Post Magazine crossword, “That Makes No Sense”

If you said the words “this doesn’t make any sense” while you were solving, you’d be literally correct. Five long Across answers include phrases with one of the human senses, but, in the Down direction, you have to skip over the letters that include those senses for their clues to work. At the same time, the clues for those five Across answers will work both with and without the senses:

• 23A: [Specialized cell that responds to stimuli] is TASTE RECEPTOR, or just RECEPTOR without the sense. Crossing it are what appear to be ME(T)AL, OM(A)NI, PO(S)TS, (T)EASE, and GA(E)L, but remove the TASTE letters from 23A and you get MEAL, OMNI, POTS, EASE, and GAL.
• 49A: [Device for many an Apple Music subscriber] is IPOD TOUCH, or just IPOD without the sense. Crossing it are (T)HAT, SH(O)E, A(U)NT, A(C)RE, and S(H)IN.
• 70A: [Something picked up at an auto dealership] is NEW CAR SMELL, or just NEW CAR without the sense. Crossing it are PAR(S)ED, (M)ALIGNS, B(E)RET, MO(L)E, and BA(L)D.
• 93A: [Go through notes, say] is SIGHT-READ, or just READ without the sense. Crossing it are VI(S)A, IR(I)S, MA(G)E, T(H)AD, and POE(T).
• 122A: [C-SPAN 2 focus] is SENATE HEARING, or just SENATE without the sense. Crossing it are O(H)NO, R(E)AP, T(A)BS, DOZE(R), ARK.(I)ES, PI(N)TA, and SE(G)AL.

This was a residual idea from my “5×5” metapuzzle last month, which partly featured the five senses. Just like other “skip over some letters” puzzles I’ve written, my goal is to make all the crossing words real both with and without the trick letters. That was tricky to work out in the southeast corner, where I needed seven adjacent Down answers to use and not use the letters of HEARING.

The grid actually went through one major revision after test-solving. SIGHT-READ had originally been SIGHT-SING, which is a term I know from singing in choir — it’s where you attempt to sing lines of music upon seeing them for the first time. It’s essentially sight-reading, but specifically for choir singers. The reason I went with SIGHT-SING at first was because I had trouble thinking of a decent clue that would work for both READ and SIGHT-READ, whereas SIGHT-SING seemed to set me up pretty well with [Emulate a choir member during rehearsal]. I was convinced, though, that SIGHT-SING is just not as familiar as a phrase as SIGHT-READ, and once I landed on [Go through notes, say] to hint at both READ and SIGHT-READ, I made the change.

Speaking of making a change, and to be a bit more serious, I want to address one clue in this puzzle that I came to regret in the days leading up to publication. 111D: [Ones taught sign language by Francine Patterson] is APES. Francine Patterson is the animal psychologist who became famous for training Koko the gorilla to communicate using what she called “Gorilla Sign Language.” However, the New York Times crossword published a clue for the same answer on January 22 that said [Some sign language users], and this evoked a strongly negative reaction from several solvers in a way that caught me off guard. I had always thought it was fascinating how apes could communicate with humans at all, but I didn’t do my proper due diligence. As I learned, many language researchers dispute that Koko and other gorillas actually learned sign language, arguing that they didn’t learn its syntax and had instead just mastered a few modified American Sign Language signs. Sign language is a complex form of communication and the clue equates it with what these gorillas had learned.

Matthew Sampson, a recent graduate student at Georgetown University and a member of the deaf community who objected to the New York Times clue said, “So the very simple explanation of why this is a problematic clue is that for a long time, hearing people actively tried to suppress sign language for a myriad of reasons. There are a lot of reasons why this happened, but a smaller reason is because hearing people actively promoted the idea that deaf people looked like monkeys or apes by using their hands to communicate. This was used to shame deaf people into hiding their natural language and force them to ‘learn’ how to speak and hear. It was an assimilationist tactic. In the deaf community, we are very, very sensitive about depicting monkeys/apes in sign language media. There were a few plays that were banned from deaf schools (by deaf principals) simply because they had a monkey character (think the flying monkeys in ‘The Wizard of Oz’). Koko is great and extremely beloved in the deaf community, but she also did a lot to regress the idea that sign language is a real, formal language.”

I had, unfortunately, already submitted this puzzle for final printing one week before that New York Times puzzle had run, so I couldn’t change my clue in time. But all the same, I apologize for that APES clue. It’s never my intention to write problematic clues, but I will do better next time.

Anyhow, what did you think?