Carrie

@Nox Agreed. As a longtime solver I had a visceral negative reaction on reading the clue. What I appreciate about creating and solving crosswords is how effortful it is—based on our shared references and knowledge, and our desire to challenge ourselves. I don’t want to comment on the intentions of the constructor but even if intended to poke fun at AI’s lack of poetic flair, or as a novel way to clue something, it fell completely flat for me. It is interesting for a solver, and requires effort for a constructor, to use wordplay or a novel reference. It takes the human element and the effort out to instead effectively create an empty reference just for the sake of a clue—with neither the cleverness of wordplay nor the opportunity to reference shared knowledge or learn something new that you get with scientific, literary references, etc. If someone’s ten-year old wrote this poem that would be perfectly nice, but I also would find it weird to see it pop up for EYES clued as ‘in my child’s poetry’ or the falsely universal ‘in children’s poetry.’ Like, fine, that’s interesting, but not really universal/well-known or noteworthy enough for a clue! I would suspect that most solvers, like myself, are not so much upset about this clue specifically or mad at the constructor as galled to see this type of clue pop up in the crossword. I admire the constructor for trying something new but there are many, MANY ethical reasons to avoid AI. I don’t want to see it in the crossword again.

@koty seconded! well said 🫡