Blimey! Daily NYT Crossword Doers have Especially Weak Grasp of 18th Century English Literature

What’s more abundant in an ENGL 1000 level course than literature and Owala bottles? I’ll tell you. Serial NYT Mini doers. If you ever enroll in an English class where laptops are allowed–a rarity these days–be sure to do the Mini and any other daily mind games lest you want to carry the intellectual embarrassment that your 3 turn Wordle was aided by Emily-who-sits-in-front-of-you’s discovery that “I” was the middle letter. Be diligent, there’s nothing stopping Ems from cycling through the Mini, Wordle, and Connections, and then moving on to the Washington Post Crossword and the impossible 6+ letter Wordles that she just seems to ace. Pretty intimidating, right?

Think again. Ems has shockingly low knowledge of 18th century English literature for someone enrolled in an 18th century English literature class with an 18th century English literature concentration. She doesn’t know her Crusoe from her cousin or Gulliver’s Travels from her own, to Mykonos. Alas! It seems Ems has wasted away her left hemisphere on crossword hints and Wordle strategies. “X-X-I-X-X” won’t do Ems any good when it comes to literature from MDCCCV. Dean Sniegowski sighs, “Another cross cultural analysis course wasted on crosswords.”