Anna Raccoon a couple of days ago:
Tomorrow will be the last edition of the News of the World. It will become a collector’s item, trawled over for years by the conspiracy theorists looking for hidden messages, truths revealed, if you just take the capital letters of the first sentence of alternate pages……
[...]
I am sure the subs on the News of the World will rise to the challenge and produce some superb examples tomorrow.
So close, so
very close.
Sacked News of the World staff appear to have fired a parting shot at their former editor Rebekah Brooks, disguising mocking messages in the crossword of the tabloid's final edition.
Brooks, now the chief executive of News International, reportedly brought in two loyal proofreaders to sanitise Sunday's final edition of any jibes directed at her following the newspaper's spectacular demise during the phone hacking scandal.
But they failed to detect the not-so-cryptic clues that appear to savage her in the crosswords on page 47.
Among the clues in the paper's Quickie puzzle were: "Brook", "stink", "catastrophe" and "digital protection".
The Cryptic Crossword appears to go even further, including the hints "criminal enterprise", "mix in prison", "string of recordings", and "will fear new security measure".
Another clue was "woman stares wildly at calamity", with suggestions it refers to a photograph of Mrs Brooks as she left the News International HQ in east London on Thursday after staff were told the paper would be shut down. The answer to that particular clue was "disaster".
Other answers included: "Deplored", "stench", "stir", "menace", "desist", "racket" and "tart".
Heh. They may have worked for a bunch of shits and as some suggest share some guilt by association, but whatever you think about the rank and file there you have to credit them for finding a way to raise two fingers on their way out of the door.