Claim:
An image of a crossword puzzle that somewhat resembled a swastika shape was printed by The New York Times on the first day of Hanukkah in December 2022.
Context
By email, a spokesperson for The New York Times said: “This is a common crossword design: Many open grids in crosswords have a similar spiral pattern because of the rules around rotational symmetry and black squares.”
On Dec. 18, 2022, we received reader mail that asked if The New York Times really had printed, on the first day of Hanukkah, a crossword puzzle with a design that somewhat resembled a swastika shape. Readers asked us about the subject after seeing…
