On Problematic Crossword Puzzle Vocabulary

A crossword puzzle of mine is running in today's New York Times.  It's a Triple-F puzzle -- Fine Friday Fare -- a solid themeless I suspect most people will enjoy and then forget about by the end of the day.  And that's okay by me.

The clues on some of the longer marquee answers were more straightforward than I would prefer.  My submitted clue for PUT PEN TO PAPER, for example, was "Start a book, say," which I thought was a clever redirect, as it makes the average solver think of reading before writing, but it was edited to reference writing explicitly. (Similarly, my clue for SPLITSVILLE was "A house divided?")  But this is merely a quibble, and the edits are not necessarily "wrong."  Solvers often times prefer something more straightforward, as otherwise the clues can come off as gimmicky or too clever by half.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about in this post is the entry at 5-Across: LAMEST.  I'm anticipating some criticism for this one (indeed, I got some), because the word lame, meaning inferior, is offensive to some people.  It's ableist language, implying there is something inherently bad about people who can't walk.

First, let me say upfront, this was my clue, verbatim.  It wasn't edited.  I didn't know that lame was a problematic word in certain communities.  I just learned this a few months ago.  Had I known, I would have submitted a different clue.  ("Most hobbled" seems better to me.  It's an awkward superlative, to be sure, but there is no connoted judgement.)

Lame is a word I've used and heard all my life without even thinking about its etymology.  I had never even made the connection between lame-meaning-inferior and lame-meaning-disabled.  To me, they were strictly homonyms.  It's like anemic, meaning lacking force, and anemic, meaning pertaining to the condition of anemia.  The words look and sound the same, and if you stop to think about it, you know they have the same root, but they occupy different areas in the brain.  If I read the sentence, "The Mariners offense has been anemic over the last month," I'm not thinking about hemoglobin deficiency, and I certainly don't think of it as a slight to people who have anemia.  It's just a word that means weak.

In a similar way, I thought lame was just a word that means inferior.  Even after learning that some people found it offensive, I was still not totally convinced that there was anything wrong with it.  It seemed like people trying to make something offensive that isn't offensive.  I mean, I certainly was not alone in my lame-ignorance -- I suspect even today, most people don't know it's offensive.  So, if that's the case, why not just let that be?  If almost everybody thinks two things are totally separate, then they are totally separate, and if they are totally separate then nobody need be offended.  Isn't that the better way to go?

But, upon further reflection, I disabused myself of this notion, for a two main reasons: 1) the word gay; 2) what's it to me?  On 1), it's a bit weird, and more than a bit embarrassing, to think about now, since I'm a staunch supporter of LGBTQ rights, but I used to use the word gay to mean bad frequently.  It was part of my everyday vocabulary as a teenager.  I was even using it my first semester in college, and I was resistant to change under the same rationale laid out above: It's just a word that means bad; it has nothing to do with a person's sexual preference.  Thankfully, I had some patient gay friends who helped me realize what an awful argument this is, and I completely eliminated that usage from my vocabulary.  Today, over two decades later, it seems utterly ridiculous to claim that gay doesn't actually mean gay.  The parallel with lame is obvious.

On 2), even if I didn't understand why lame-qua-inferior is problematic, I don't need to.  I just need to know there is a group of the population -- rational human beings -- who find it offensive.  That should be enough to not use it.  If it's not, then I'm just being a dick.  There are nearly 200,000 words in the English language; there are dozens of synonyms for inferior; and there is a non-offensive way to clue the entry LAME (and its derivative forms) in crossword puzzles.  Why push back on this?  What's it to me?

What's it to me?  Wouldn't we all be better off if people stopped to ask this of themselves more frequently?  Yes, yes, we would.

Well, I think I've said all I have to say on this topic.  I was planning on writing another part in this post about the usage of potentially offensive language in crossword puzzles, in general (see the discussion around 25-Down in this puzzle).  But, I don't have the time or energy to tackle that one at the moment, and, if you made it this far, you've probably had your fill of me, anyway.

Until next time...

PS -- I noticed that the entry ARE YOU BLIND has an ableist tinge to it as well.  Is that an offensive statement?  I don't think so, but if Stevie Wonder wants to tell me otherwise, I will listen.

PPS -- Months after posting the above commentary, I came across this article using lame to mean weak or unconvincing: “Hateful” and “awful” may seem a bit harsh for what reads like a lame attempt at cheekiness.  The interesting thing about this is that it's an article specifically calling out the New York Times for using offensively clueless entries in its crossword puzzle!  To be honest, I've gone back and forth and back again several times on lame since first posting this.  My slightly revised position is that I probably won't use lame in a generally pejorative sense, but I don't get offended by it, and I'm not going to proselytize against it.