While this may read like an Onion article, Google’s publicly available search trend data did reveal something a bit comical over the weekend- a Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle apparently had a lot of people stumped about who our dark lord Ozzy Osbourne is.
When looking at search patterns for the metal music category on Sunday, “heavy metal prince of darkness crossword” was a top rising query, with “prince of darkness” significantly over-indexing against its previous daily volume average:
After some quick snooping, it because clear that the sudden flurry of queries was 100% due to Question 46 down in the Sunday Times crossword puzzle: Heavy metal’s “Prince of Darkness”:
While this writer isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, with a gun to their head they could certainly tell you that the answer to 46 down is OSBOURNE.
Now, to be fair, do we know with 100% certainty that that the search spike was caused by old people, specifically? Well, no. But, we reckon 3 generalizations here:
- Not a lot of folks under 70 do NY Times crossword puzzles
- Ozzy is enough of a cross-generational icon that most younger folks know his moniker, whether they listen to metal or not
- A large portion of the search query volume came from… Florida. Birthplace of Obituary and old person retirement home capital of the world.
So, while we hate to call out your sweet ‘ol nana, it’s on you to do a better job teaching her about important metal factoids and history. At the very least, she needs to know that Ozzy Osbourne is the definitive Prince of Darkness. How else is she going to stay cutthroat in future nursing home crossword tournaments?
We are of course justing being playful here (our blackened hearts somehow still love all people, including the elderly)…
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Words by: The Pit staff
