70 Across, last Sunday’s New York Times crossword puzzle asked: “The better of two major sci-fi film franchises.” STAR TREK or STAR WARS?, ye old fandom shit-stirrer.

Unless you were a hardcore fan of one of these franchises and filled in the missing spaces straight away, 70 Across is a crossword anomaly because the answer is ambiguous — either WARS or TREK completed the four adjacent rows. A clever double entendre.

“I am a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, so it’s nice to be able to highlight both in one puzzle,” said puzzle constructor Stephen McCarthy in the column.

Fun little trick in the Sunday New York Times crossword yesterday: the central theme clue was "The better of two sci-fi franchises", and regardless of whether you put Star Wars or Star Trek, the crossing clues worked pic.twitter.com/NS4LDxwxxl

— ℳatt (matttomic.bsky.social) (@matttomic) February 7, 2022

The New York Times has other word puzzles Spelling Bee and Letter Boxed, the math game Sudoku, visual games Tiles and Vertex, and just this month, the paper bought the online sensation Wordle. They sure know how to treat their readers.