Learning lost

By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS  |  September 9, 2010

Frank Heppner
Honors professor of biological sciences
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, Rhode Island


SHARP EYES

This is a message for Matt Jones, who usually does a great job at providing us with a challenging crossword puzzle. Concerning last week’s clue 24 Down, it looks like Matt has confused our ancestors (those who came before us) with our descendants (those who follow us). I’ll bet he really knows that we do not know who our descendants will be, and that we all certainly do not have one common descendant (how would that work?)

Frank Maguire
South Portland

EDITOR’S NOTE: The clue in question was “Mitochondrial ___ (descendant of all living humans)” and the answer was EVE. Crossword creator Matt Jones reports that of all the readers in 47 newspapers nationwide, alert puzzler Frank Maguire is the only one to have caught that error.

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