Those snappy June 16 crosswords

[Thomps2525]

Today's Daily News crossword by Paul Hunsberger includes twelve circled letters and four letters inside jagged shapes. Here are the four answers with those sixteen letters in boldface:

URBANDESIGN
HAREBRAINEDIDEA
BROADMINDED
WHIPPERSNAPPERS

"Office item suggested visually by this puzzle" is ELASTICBAND. Get it? The band stretches until it finally snaps. Sometimes I snap too, but I don't want to get into that right now.

C.C. Burnikel's crossword in the Los Angeles Times included PARTYPOOPER, EMPTYPOCKETS and UTILITYPOLES. The theme, "Smartphone texting feature, which usually fixes the thing hidden" in those answers, is AUTOCORRECT. Get it?

With so many crossword creators now using computer programs to come up with fill words, puzzles should be containing fewer over-used words but that doesn't seem to be the case. Burnikel today used ALE, AMP, CPA, ECRU, IMP, MRS, NEE, OBOE, ORCA and OWE and Hunsberger used APE, EEL, ELK, INN, LOO and OAT. The 13x13 NEA crossword includes AIL, EKE, ELF, ERA, LEI and SEE. The Universal crossword includes ALI, ATE, EDGE, EMU and ERA.

During a 30-day period in August 2014 and again in January 2015, I kept track of all the occurrences of those over-used three- and four-letter words in crossword puzzles. The word used most frequently: ALE. In 2014, Merl Reagle constructed a puzzle that did not use any of those over-used words. He did that only once and I've never heard of anyone else creating such a puzzle. Is it that difficult? The January list of over-used words is at http://www.cruciverb.com/index.php?topic=106228.0

[magus]

C.C. Burnikel's crossword in the Los Angeles Times included PARTYPOOPER, EMPTYPOCKETS and UTILITYPOLES. The theme, "Smartphone texting feature, which usually fixes the thing hidden" in those answers, is AUTOCORRECT. Get it?

No.  Why not explain it?  What you have here is a confirmation for those who already know (those who "get it").

[Thomps2525]

Each of those words includes TYPO, something an auto-correct feature or spell-check program will presumably correct, although such programs are not infallible. Many years ago, the New York Daily News had a story about a politician running for re-election in his "burro." Obviously the writer meant to say "borough" but "burro" was spelled correctly and the spell-check program had no way of knowing that the poor schmuck meant the other word.