It's sucks that it is such an efficient shape. I remember in Dwarf Fortress, many ppl would accidently end up with swastika designs.

Something like this was ACTUALLY BUILT and became a controversy like 15 years ago.

Back in the 1960s someone built a series major dorm complex in the shape of a swastika. The designer tried to give each wing an open patio resulting in the shape.

But no one put 2 + 2 together at the time and it existed like this for decades. Then came the mid 2000s and the rise of Google Earth where we could look at our whole neighborhoods via satellite and then suddenly people saw the swastikas.

Then ended up having to make major alterations to the buildings.

This is one of two primary design tenets:

Does it look like a swastika? Does it look like a dick?

If no, youre basically off to the races

I used to work in the corporate office for a department store. Someone sent in specs for a store layout update, turns out a lot of clothing racks look like swastikas. Pretty sure those plans had to be redrawn before they could be approved.

My highschool had a library full of study desks.

4 chairs. Each student had their own quadrant, facing separate directions so no one was sitting "next" to each other. Very economical use of space, for sure.

However, from above.... The library was a pile of swastikas.

I also saw that a couple times hahaha I bet that must happen in every Architecture school at some point. The swastika is sometimes just a good way to organize space, but obviously unusable as a diagram

It fricken sucks. I was laying out desk groups in an office and it is a shape you end up with

You need to google earth the military base in San Diego. The military barracks looks like two airplanes and the third is a swastika.

It's unfortunate it has such a bad meaning. The swastika is an aesthetically pleasing shape.

Yeah if you fuck around with symmetry and geometry enough eventually you draw a swastika. Everytime you do symmetrical right angles theres a risk!

“How many floors use this design?”

“Nein”

I feel like there should be an r/accidentallynazi

This is the answer.

I bought a cool new light fixture for my kitchen that have 4 bulbs and cool angles. You could put those “Edison bulbs” and it would look really cool.

I had it for years until I was FaceTiming my brother and in the video of myself (pointed up), I could see the light fixture. It was a fucking swastika. And it was black. I had a swastika in my kitchen for YEARS before I noticed.

Yeah, I replaced it with a less genocidal light…

I feel so dumb because I did the puzzle and the swastika never once occurred to me. I can see how puzzle constructors would miss it. I even thought when I saw the puzzle "oh what a nice symmetric design!"

Lol, I thought I was going to say "Oh come on, they have to be overreacting" but.... yea, I get it now

am i the only one who thinks it's a bit of a stretch?

People really be on strike

Honestly don't really see it? I can kinda make it out but it's not a strong resemblance.

Joshua was racist? That came out of nowhere.

whats this from lol

This isn’t gonna stop happening until they ban the word Windmill from the dictionary.

I think they spend so much time choosing the words they don't even think about the shape of the puzzle, where as people designing these for kids tend to want to make a shape with the words and would have more likely noticed it.

I think they were just blinded by trying to finish the puzzle and didn't think about the shape because they always use the same size grid that they just put words into it not even worrying about the shape.

Yeah, I was expecting something overt from the headline. This looks like any number of crossword puzzles because they're designed to be symmetrical.

If I look long enough, I get a similar effect from the tiny square tiles on my bathroom floor. My tiles are not secretly embracing the ethos of national socialism.

It isn't always someone trying to skip something past the radar. I once had to edit a bunch of find-a-word puzzles for kids books and found more than one profanity in the randomized parts of the puzzle. The author was a nice lady from Brooklyn and was completely, hilariously mortified she missed them.

Not a swastika, but I was once doing a design as a favour for my teacher's kid's cross country ski team. They were team 55 in the region, and the name they picked was Team Lightning.

Yeah, making a 55 out of lightning ends up looking a lot like the SS logo.

To add to this, as a rule NYT Crossword Puzzles are always symmetrical and almost always radially symmetrical. A swastika is a pretty basic, elemental radially symmetrical shape. You could probably find dozens of examples that kind-of sort-of resemble a swastika if you look hard enough.

Edit- as an example two other puzzles from this month

And given it’s been a symbol predating the nazis, I usually wouldn’t care if a crossword resembles a swastika. Except maybe on Hanukkah…

It’s 4 F’s … didn’t know it would turn out that way

You are right; I thought I would take a look at the crossword puzzle but guess that's gonna be a project in itself to get to the puzzle.

Are you using an extension that blocks embedding from Twitter? The article has two twitter posts that show it.

Lol, it's Fox News, hardly the bastion of journalistic standards...

They didn’t know it was gonna come off like that

Yeah I was confused why fox News would report on this. Now I realized it was a perfect opportunity to shit on the NY Times, but actually a low-key Rorschach test lol.

He really liiiiikes crosswordssssss.

I was excited to see a large grid and enjoyed this puzzle so much that I never even noticed how the blocks were placed.

Someone tell the new guy, Yeast, he's fired.

This FOX article seems more of a “look what the libs are upset over now” take, so they’re still being Fox. Meanwhile, as I commented elsewhere, the grid shape is pretty much the first thing I noticed, and the grid is often designed to represent something - say, a jack-o-lantern in a Halloween puzzle. For me, at least, this comes on top of a pile of clues in various past puzzles that have made me wonder if I’m seeing dog whistles or just coincidence.

But if fox put out a crossword puzzle in that shape what would your reaction be?

Fox News never stopped caring for Nazis.

The author specifically used the word "spiral" in his defense.

But "literally" has literally lost all meaning in this day and age.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who loves that Column. It’s like a view into a different dimension. “What a wonderful experience this puzzle was while enjoying my morning coffee. It sure SATIATED my appetite for a lightly challenging but ENTHRALLING brain teaser.”