Those of you who do not turn to the comics pages for the puzzles will not understand how picky puzzlers can be. I consistently get one complaint, similar to this week’s e-mail:
“I’ve been going to send you an e-mail for the last several years, but it is such a trivial thing, that I haven’t done it. My small pet peeve is that in the Sunday Arts section where you put the weekly puzzles you put the answers on a prior page – always. Do you think that your readers need extra help in solving the puzzles?”
No, we do not put the puzzle answers before the puzzles to give some less literate readers assistance.
A while ago, we got complaints that the answer grids were too small, so now we run them in a three-column space so the answers are easier to read. This means that the Features copy desk has to find a space wide enough and deep enough to run the answer grids. Usually, the proper-size space is found in the pages preceding the puzzles themselves.
The only comfort I can offer is this: Stop peeking at the answers! The page with the puzzles is listed on the front Arts page right under “The Arts” nameplate. Go directly to that page.
Assembling the book: Apparently some incorrectly assembled TV Week booklets were delivered to subscribers Sunday, leading to some perplexed e-mails and phone calls:
“Can the TV Week guide get any worse? YES. In today’s copy, in addition to being folded so weirdly, the pages were all out of sync. It took scissors and rearranging to get it into shape to be usable. Is there a language problem in the pressroom or in the TV Weekly guide department?”
Or this:
“Who in the world put the TV Week together this time??? What a mess:
“Page 32 follows page 4; page 31, 30 and 29 follow that; then we find pages 9 through 12; then page 24, 25; page 22 next followed by page 21; page 17 through 20; skip backward then to page 16, 15, 14, 13 (all folded incorrectly so that you have to refold in order to read anything on the right edge); then we go to pages 25 through 28; back to page 8, 7, 6, 5, in that order; back to page 33, 34 and 35.
“Just how are we supposed to read this?”
Newspaper sections that are incorrectly folded or assembled should not get out of the Newspaper Agency Corp. building in West Valley.
But last Sunday, some did.
According to Bob Burns, NAC’s senior vice president for production, the only way that kind of pagination can occur is if the plates are put on the press in the wrong order. Apparently, Burns said, press operators must have realized the mistake early in the press run and stopped the press, put the plates on in the correct order and then restarted the press. They must have thought they threw away all of the bad copies, but some made it to subscribers’ homes.
Out, out damned ink: Some readers are upset about the ink that comes off on their hands:
“The Tribune’s newspaper print ‘bleeds.’ My hands should not be that black after reading your paper.”
You are correct, the ink should not blacken your fingers. Again, Bob Burns has a reply for you:
“The presses we are using at the new plant are the first of their kind in the world. We are testing different materials (including inks) to determine the correct mix for excellent reproduction and customer satisfaction. We will be testing inks through the summer with a goal to reduce ink rub-off.”
Relief is in sight.
Number of people upset about page order in TV book
27
Number of people complaining about ink on fingers
46
Number of people asking about circulation problems
41
Number of people asking about NASCAR coverage
6
