43 Down is "Bush"

No, not really, that was a gratuitous insult. But 43 Down is "scumbag," at least in Monday's edition of the New York Times crossword puzzle. This has stirred some controversy, as Slate reports,

If you finished Monday's crossword puzzle in the New York Times, your answer for 43 Down, clued as "Scoundrel," was SCUMBAG. Most puzzlers, penciling in these letters, felt nothing more than mild satisfaction. But a small number knew enough to be outraged.

The reason for the outrage?

The original meaning of scumbag is "condom." The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to 1967, with 1971 as the first example of the "despicable person" sense, but current research has pushed the dates back to 1935 (based on the still earlier scum, "semen," and bag, "a condom") and 1950 respectively.

As a frequent puzzler, I am thrilled that my staid hobby has finally been associated with sex and controversy.