In December of 2014, an answer in the New York Times crossword puzzle had people all over the world scurrying for their dictionaries. The clue was “Scrape by.” The answer was “DOOK.”

What the heck was a dook?

In American-style crosswords, every letter in the grid is part of two words, one going across and one going down. So the first thing people did is double-check all the crossing words to make sure DOOK was indeed the answer to 33 across.

The D was part of the downward word HIDE. The first O was part of the downward word LOGIC. The second O was part of LOOSER. And the K was the last letter in HENRIK. So DOOK was the correct answer, but it made no sense.

Dictionaries showed that dook is a clicking sound that ferrets make. Also, in British English, dook is a variant of the Scottish word douk, meaning to bathe or plunge into water. Dook is also Scottish for a wooden plug hammered into the wall to hold a nail or screw.

But this was an American puzzle, not a British one. If a British or Scottish word were to be used as an answer, the clue would have noted that.

What other dooks could there be?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says a dook is a “haulage incline at a mine.”

Just so you know, there are crossword puzzle blogs where people discuss the New York Times puzzles. Also, the newspaper’s daily crosswords start out easy on Monday and get progressively harder throughout the week. Dook appeared in a Tuesday edition, which led to blog comments such as this: “Dook?? What the heck. A bizarre word like that on a Tuesday???”

Some crossword solvers were horrified and some were joyful that perhaps the New York Times had made a mistake. There were no indications that dook could in any way be the answer to scrape by. So untold thousands of puzzle lovers looked at the solution in the newspaper, and there it was, dook.

It took some time, but a clever person realized that the answer for the clue “Scrape by” wasn’t dook, it was “do OK.” All across the world, there was a collective groan.

In some newspapers, crosswords will let you know if an answer consists of two or more words. Their clue for dook would have been written: “Scrape by (2,2)” This would mean that the answer consists of two words, each two letters long. But the New York Times doesn’t do that.

Since December of 2014, a new definition has been added for dook: In a crossword grid, words placed together that can be misinterpreted.

In a 2019 puzzle, there was this clue: Desperate. The answer was DOORDIE. Dictionaries were no help. Some people saw the answer as door die. This sort of made sense, but not really. It took solvers awhile to parse it into “do or die.” This led to someone saying, “I’m nominating DOORDIE for dook of the year.”

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