DOWNLOADABLE CROSSWORD: Unthemely #52 (PUZ) (PDF)
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Stray observation and a minor spoiler on last week’s MGWCC #311, “We Built This City”: The clue for 1 Across is {A 103-year-old one was recently in the news}. I had the four-letter answer’s first two letters, O and R, from the down entries and initially wrote in the answer was OREO, but it turned out to be ORCA. The OREO idea had such a ring of validity. The math is slightly off, but I could imagine that one of the cookies from the original 1912 batch was found in some Nabisco storage facility. It would just as newsworthy a discovery as a centenarian whale. Then I remembered a similar confusion in an ACPT playoff puzzle from the late ’90s — the clue was {Black and white killer} and Doug Hoylman initially wrote in OREO instead of ORCA.
Did anyone else make my misstep on the Gaffney puzzle? Can anyone else think of another good clue for ORCA that might trick a solver into guessing OREO, or vice-versa?
life as a puzzle 
Just when you thought you were out …. Wasn’t Doug, it was me, and not only did I “initially” enter it, but I left it in, along with another wrong letter in that corner.
Huh. I know it was shown on the “Nightline” segment in close-up but I guess I misremembered the solver. Was that also the puzzle with MAINSTEM/MAINSTEP?