Visual Description: Boy and girl lamenting their drift away rowboat.
KANOE = OAKEN, SWENY = NEWSY, GOTSDY = STODGY, GOTTOR = GROTTO — Giving us: KNNSSOOTT
Clue/Question: Why their boat floated away.
Answer: KNOTS NOTS?
(It’s the best I can come up with! Anybody get something different?) – YUR
Unclerave's Wordy Weblog 
maybe it’s “snots knot,” since he is being a bit of a snot about it.
Newsy is not an ordinary word and the answer “knots nots” makes no sense. Either this is just a stupid puzzle or “sweny” is a mistake. A logical answer would be “loose knot” and “newsy” would have to be a different word with L and E circled.
The only answer that I came up with is “Knots Nots”, which doesn’t make any sense to me. “Snots Knot” doesn’t make sense either, because the person saying, “you tied it wrong” wasn’t the one who tied up the boat. Usually these are easy.
Anyone else have a clue or are Henri and Mike getting old?
I hear it’s a younger pair putting these together, nowadays. Maybe we should be asking what they’re smoking in that hookah!!! Well, gang. It looks like we’re all at their mercy until Monday morning’s paper! Stay tuned. (Let’s hope they don’t: Stay stoned!)
YUR
umm.. anyone got the answers to the dec 29 crossword… i have most of them but i still dont get it…help please
John,
The crossword puzzles vary from paper to paper. I was able to finish mine. MAYBE it’s the same as yours, but who knows. Give me the clue to the one(s) you’re having trouble with, and I’ll see if we’re “on the same page”. — YUR
Hey everyone, I just want to confirm that the answer was in fact KNOTS NOTS. I just saw it in the Newsday paper today here in New York. Seeing as how that answer was ridiculous I figured I’d google it and see if any others were thinking the same thing about it, and I came across this site. 🙂
I agree with you all, me and my mom were trying to solve it and that answer made absolutely no sense so we just decided we were probably overlooking something. Turns out we weren’t! WOW what a dumb puzzle…
Hi all we just did the puzzle in Brisbane, Australia and my mum and I were thinking the same thing. knots nots could not possibly be the answer. so I did the same and searched the web and we find that it is correct. very dumb puzzle!!!.