One of the craziest, most crackpot conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 must have been the rumour, widely circulated by and among muslim groups, that the Israelis were involved in the terrorist attack - which could not possible have been perpetrated by by any Arab muslim nation or fundamentalist group. We could only have wished, at that time, that anyone who subscribed to this theory - and it included apparently rational and educated people - had stopped to think for one moment and come up with the realization: 'Well surely at least just a few of those Israelis and American Jews who worked in or near the site that was to become Ground Zero would have thought to mention to their gentile friends and colleagues that it might be inadvisable for them to go into work in the Twin Towers on that day.' But apparently none of them did!! In any case, had the Israelis really wished to incite the US administration to embark on a hostile and violent assault on the Arab/ Muslim world, there may have been more subtle and persuasive ways of doing just that.

And yet .....a few days before 9/11 on Friday September 7th 2001 a crossword puzzle appearing on page 30 of Time Off leisure supplement in The Gulf Today, an English-language newspaper published in Dubai, featured the following two clues:

6 (down) A live TV broadcast in Israel (3,4)
15 (across) Put on guard from a combination of fear and wonder (10)

Work them out. They're pretty easy - but also quite eerie and, just maybe, prophetic!

The question is: who compiled this puzzle - maybe of British origin, because it's cryptic and most American puzzles tend to provide straightforward definition-type clues, and if it was syndicated by a western newspaper group, which group was it and did it appear anywhere else apart from within this Middle East newspaper.

There is a possible precedent for this kind of use of cryptic insertions, maybe by intelligence services or others in national publications, that comes from WW11. Then, the British daily @The Daily Telegraph', published puzzles, or at least a puzzle with solutions that could have given away allied information about the D-day landings. Beachheads with codenames such as 'Omaha' and 'Nebraska' appeared in the puzzles along with the operation's overall codename 'Overlord'. A British intelligence investigation into this was inconclusive.

Anyone else out there with info that might help to flesh out a more complete story?