Best crossword clue ever

[aerynne]

When ert's and my parents were in town the weekend before last, my dad alerted me to the Best Crossword Clue Ever. See if you can get it! It took me a few minutes.

5 letters: IJKLMN

Comments

[lightcastle]

Um, You gave the answer right away, how was I supposed to guess? (Possibly this is due to me coming here from an email and not from a friends list.)

I think it is a clever clue.

[aerynne]

It was behind an lj cut! I'm sorry!

[lightcastle]

not your fault :)

[rjpb]

It took me about 30 seconds. Oddly, I suck at standard crossword clues, and rarely can get more than two or three clues of any crossword puzzle. If clues were more like this, I might actually enjoy them.

[thedan]

IJKLMN is not "H to O". It's the string that comes *between* H and O. And even if it were, it wouldn't be cluing water, it would be cluing something else that phonetically clues water.

If this were part of a theme, and there were a bunch of other clues in the same puzzle that worked in the same way, that would be neat and acceptable. Standing on its own, it's sloppy and not a good clue.

[aerynne]

I've seen clues before for three-letter answers that were "B to F" or "Q to U". I definitely see your point, but I'm not sure that most normal people would make that distinction, even though it's the correct distinction to make, cf the large amount of time spent on explaining it in Computer Science 101.

It was apparently a clue in the London Times Sunday puzzle; I don't know if they tend towards more obscure clues like this or not.

[mr_teem]

Hurm. "Fortran-77 Integer" isn't five letters.

[mr_teem]

Auuggggh! That's awful.

citabria wants to know what puzzle that was--she wants to pummel the author.

[seborn]

Thank you! So glad it wasn't just me.

[yellowsnakepoet]

Hi, I added you. I hope you don't mind. :)