The New York Times crosswords are usually extremely careful about fact-checking, so I was surprised to disagree with two clues in the past two months.

The April 20 puzzle had the clue "Googly-eyed Muppet" with ELMO as the answer. To me, googly eyes have pupils that move independently and randomly. Cookie Monster has googly eyes. I say Elmo does not. Indeed, Elmo with googly eyes would be disturbing.

The March 19 puzzle gave "Tai chi instructor" as the clue for the Japanese word SENSEI. Tai chi is Chinese, so this was a bad clue.

Come on, Wil, you're usually better than this!

UPDATE: I see from the Times crossword blog I was not alone in my reaction to SENSEI. But I don't see anybody else objecting to ELMO in the blog entry for the 4/20 puzzle.