‘A’GGRAVATED

Your Puzzler constructors are, in the view of my wife and myself, marvelously talented, clever and a source of great pleasure. I am increasingly annoyed with those of your correspondents who, almost every week, can be found carping re some obscure and picayune “correction” they think they’ve made about the puzzle.

Case in point: the Nov. 23 letter from my apparent contemporary, Thomas D. Bratter, re “Alpha, Bravo, etc.” I was a wireless operator (Canadian Army, 1942-46) and all the Allied usage here and overseas was “Able, Baker,” a code surely familiar to millions. Anyone attempting to solve the Puzzler could be assumed to know this.

Let those misguided nit-pickers who gnaw away at these clues be made aware that from New York to Vancouver, from Atlanta to Toronto, no weekly crosswords we have seen could compare to the inspired work of Sylvia Burzstyn and Barry Tunick. Let those naysayers try, just once, to compose a literate, amusing yet challenging crossword, and perhaps, perhaps, they will see what an accomplishment we find every week in the Puzzler.

EARL WHITZMAN

Tarzana

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I put in some time as a radio-teletype operator in the U.S. Army. I myself noticed the Puzzler discrepancy but felt the slight error of no importance.

What really gave me a chuckle was Mr. Bratter’s sign-off, “Over and out!” The use of this phrase makes me tend to believe that the gentleman probably learned his radio procedures from old John Wayne and Dane Clark movies. Any radio operator knows that ending a message with over means a response is expected; ending a message with out means that no response is expected. They are never used together if proper procedure is exercised.

BRUCE DEY

Chino Hills