Wordsearch fail

[fireheart]

http://www.news.com.au/business/comp...gn=news-widget

Possible NSFW, but the word in question is censored.

Basically, Woolies (a supermarket chain) has been putting out these books and trading card series. Kids can collect the cards when their parents shop and then trade the cards with their friends. They're Australian animals btw.

Anyway, in the books, a wordsearch puzzle accidentally put the word "fuck" into it somewhere. Needless to say, the reaction was mixed.

Company's response: apology, possible reprint and acknowledging that the puzzle was randomly generated.
Half of the parents response: disgusting, filthy, blah blah blah.
The other half: blaming the parents who were blaming Woolies.

[dalesys]

Half of the parents response: disgusting, filthy, blah blah blah.
The other half: blaming the parents who were blaming Woolies.

Yah little bastids ain't sposed to Ess Ay Why the fuck word!

[sms001]

OMIGOD911TYBBQ!!! There's the word "gay" in there too! Woolies hates the children. Or likes them too much. Or whatever claptrap people can imbue random letters with.

Although, as a programmer, I gotta say that generating one of these puzzles with a list of letter combinations that shouldn't be allowed would be pretty darn easy. Maybe a trolling prank gone wrong at the publisher? Certainly not at the department store as the "Hey Public Relations flunky - the books are in for the Nature promo - check it out for vulgarities, would ya?" scenario just doesn't seem too plausible.

[wolfie]

Sounds almost like what happened with a Coke contest in Canada. Each cap had an English word and a French word, and you'd try to make sentences out of the words. Unfortunately, they neglected to make up a list of English/French pairings that should not be on the same cap, and the game was called off after publicity about a cap that said "You retard". Note that "retard" in French means "late", rather than being an offensive term.

[fireheart]

Funnily enough, the books HAVEN'T been recalled. In fact, nearly every store has admitted to being sold out of them because they're in such high demand!

[MoonCat]

OK, once upon a time when my newspaper took personal dating ads....some guy managed to put together an ad that had a little secret message running down the left hand side of the paragraph. It said something like "looking for a girl who won't mind some f**cking" or something to that effect.

No one spotted it until the ad had printed. You can bet they canceled that one pretty damn quick.