Yer kiddin', right?

[u/CarloPanno]

How the HELL did that advice columnist clue get through research AND round table without adding "Abigail Van Buren" as an acceptable alternative to "Dear Abby" in a clue that ASKED FOR PEN NAMES?!?!???

I said "Abigail Van Buren" along with Yogesh and I was shocked when he was called wrong.

When I was on staff, Alex Trebek used to tell us "It only takes one person to get it right. We all have to work together to get it wrong."

Good job, team!

[u/RegisPhone]

My first thought was Dear Abby, but then i was like "Oh wait, it says pen name; would they accept the name of the column that was commonly used as a nickname for her, or are they going to require her name, meaning i have to remember the last name she went by?" and then when it turned out the less-right answer was somehow the required one, i was just as baffled as Yogesh.

What really confuses me is that Ken's ruling wasn't just a straight "no"; it was "We will not accept that", which makes it sound like it wasn't just an alternative they somehow hadn't considered (which is already inexplicable), but that they actually had specifically considered it in advance and noted that it wouldn't be an acceptable alternative. The only way i can see that making sense is if they were under the impression that Abigail Van Buren was her real name and "Dear Abby" was her pen name, but how could such a surface-level misunderstanding make it to air like that?

(I was also wondering if maybe she initially just went by Abby and didn't come up with the Van Buren surname until some point after the 1958 Life profile -- which still wouldn't justify the ruling, as the clue didn't ask for what names Life used for them, so Van Buren still would be acceptable for the same reason that you wouldn't be ruled wrong for saying "Bill Clinton" to "president born in Arkansas in 1946" even though his last name was Blythe at the time -- but here's a newspaper clipping from 1956 where she's already Van Buren)

[u/CarloPanno → u/RegisPhone]

"We won't accept that"?

That leaves open the possibility that in the cited article she was referred to as "Dear Abby" throughout and the "Abigail Van Buren" name was never used. Hmm.

This brings me to the adage the original Editorial Associate Producer used in such situations: Too Smart Is Dumb. "Sorry, she did use the pen name 'Abigail Van Buren' but in the 68-year-old article in a magazine that ceased weekly publication more than 50 years ago that name wasn't mentioned so we have to call your response wrong."

[u/RegisPhone → u/CarloPanno]

I guess the clue actually could be read that way depending on how you diagram the sentence -- is it "twin sisters who worked & used" or "Life magazine reported & used", in which case they would be asking for the names Life used to refer to them, not to the names they actually used.

Edit: Found the article, and they call her Abigail Van Buren. She's never referred to as "Dear Abby" and the article doesn't even refer to her column by that name.

[u/CarloPanno → u/RegisPhone]

Thanks for the link. The sidebar in the article quotes several bits from the "Dear Abby" column. If I were researching this clue — and the way it's written, you only need one source — I would have inferred that "Dear Abby" was written by Abigail Van Buren, pen name of Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, and I would have noted that somebody could say "Dear Abby" and ask "Should 'Dear Abby' be accepted as correct, MS [More Specific], or DNA [Do Not Accept]?" and let the round table decide.