A disgraced crossword puzzle writer included a rape joke in one of his syndicated puzzles, which ran in some major newspapers this week. Timothy Parker was already a polarizing name in the crossword community after FiveThirtyEight revealed last year that he’d plagiarized dozens of New York Times crossword puzzles and repurposed them for the syndicated Universal Crossword, where he’s still published to this day. On Tuesday, news organizations across the country ran Parker’s crossword, titled “People to Shun,” which included a bizarre, three-part rape joke as an answer to the clue “Run from anyone who says this.”The answer, which spans the combined length of 17, 41 and 63 across, reads: “PSST HEY DOES THIS OLD RAG SMELL LIKE CHLOROFORM TO YOU.”The disgusting joke references chloroform, a chemical compound that has been used to knock people out and sexually assault them. Evan Birnholz, the Sunday crossword writer for The Washington Post, revealed the answer to Parker’s puzzle Wednesday on Twitter, calling for Universal Crossword and the papers that ran the puzzle to take notice.

Source: Huffington Post September 20, 2017 20:31 UTC