To Whom it May Concern at Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
(The following is a letter I wrote to Andrews McMeel Publishing regarding a recent word-search-a-day calendar.)
I recently received as a gift your Posh Word Search 2012 Calendar. I was ecstatic to receive such a gift; I crave puzzles, and was especially enticed by the promise of topical puzzle categories, such as “Pop Star Princesses” and “iPod.” However, there is an issue with your puzzle calendar that I feel necessary to bring up: the amount of typos.
From a young age I was trained by my father to seek out and find any and all typos in a document, no matter the setting. I was continually the scourge of diner placemat menus, my brother’s orchestra concert playbills, and other assorted printings that had small, almost unnoticeable mistakes. I do not expect to find typos in everything I read, but if I read something that contains a typo, I am sure to spot it. But of all the places to find typos, I truly did not expect that your publication of the Posh Word Search 2012 Calendar would be one of them.
Language puzzles, especially word searches, must be extremely vigilant in regards to typos, because an errant keystroke may mean the marring of the answer, the entire point of the puzzle. As such, I was dismayed to find a typo in the very first puzzle of the calendar, “New Year’s Eve” on December 31/January 1 (“noisemaker” instead of “noisemakers”). But I thought it was a fluke. Not a big deal. When there was a typo in the puzzle just two days later, in January 3rd’s “National Parks” (you printed “Big Ben,” not the correct “Big Bend”), my heart began to sink. Could Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC actually print a word search puzzle calendar with multiple typos?
In short, yes. As of the puzzle for today, “Betty White’s TV Guest Spots” (where I spotted the egregious “Ny Name is Earl” in place of the correct “My Name is Earl”), I have found five mistakes. It is not just a mistake in the puzzle; the small answer key printed on the back of each page has the incorrect spelling of the phrase circled, as if it were correct. It is not correct!
So far I have solved fifteen puzzles and found five typos, or on average, one typo every three puzzles. What this indicates to me is that no one on the Andrews McMeel Publishing staff bothered to actually play through the word searches to make sure that they were free from error. This, Sir or Madam, is extremely disheartening. What’s worse is that the typos appear only every few days, creating a sense of dread while completing puzzles without typos. Will this be the one? Will I find a typo today? It is positively nerve-wracking.
I realize that the Posh Word Search 2012 Calendar may not be of the highest priority in the office of Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, but as a recipient of the calendar and avid puzzle enthusiast, it is important to me. I will continue to play through the puzzle calendar year, although I do so with a heavy heart burdened with the memory of past puzzle transgressions, and a mind cautiously prepared for the mistakes I increasingly expect to come. I can only hope that my letter will inspire the editing staff at Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC to be more careful, so that Posh Word Search 2013 Calendar is free from the oversights present in the 2012 edition.
Sincerely,
Jon Wolf
