Right Up My Alley

I almost always still get a Sunday paper, and when I do I always try my hand at the New York Times crossword, which is in the Detroit Free Press every week for some reason. Go figure.

While I generally only completely finish the thing about three times a year (hey, it's a challenging crossword) yesterday's offering was right in my wheelhouse, a great big fat pitch down the middle of the plate. The main clues were about logical fallacies. Logic is a subset of philosophy.

I nailed each answer without more prompts than the clues themselves. I even got, on the first pass, the Latin one: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Roughly translated for those of you not familiar with the language of ancient Rome, it means, after, therefore because of. It's the argument that since A occurred before B, A caused B. Here's a solid example: Marty was born in 1960, and civil war broke out in Angola in 1961. Therefore, Marty caused the Angolan Civil War. That's obviously untrue. I think. I mean, I was a year old in 1961. I don't remember much of anything.

Anyway, I got them all correct, each and every error of logic, even the No True Scotsman. I knew one day that that minor in philosophy from the University of Detroit would pay off.