These dials required you to stick the tip of your index finger into a hole in the dial matching the number you wanted and use that finger to rotate the entire dial around to a stopping point. If the person you were calling had a lot of nines in their number, you could occasionally dislocate your distal phalanx. So the next time your parents make a dad joke about injuring your thumbs because you’re “texting all the time,” ask them how their rotary dialing fingers are doing. 11D: I had KORAN before QURAN, until I realized that 15A was ABUT and, with the U, the first letter had to be a Q. “Small complication?” isn’t a minor issue, it’s a problem, but since we’re supposed to focus on the word “small,” we’re going to reduce it to a PROB.

Source: New York Times March 05, 2019 03:00 UTC