A man is murdered and tries to use an "X" from a Scrabble set to indicate his killer.
What the heck is it with Larry and Christmas, anyway? There are only eleven Larry mysteries all told, and fully three of them have something to do with the Yule season: "Santa Claus Gets a Coin,” "The Thirteenth Day of Christmas,” and now this one.
Well, I like it anyway. The solution comes out to be that the man—who is Greek—isn’t trying to get the Latin letter eks, he’s trying to get the Greek letter chi, which can be used as an abbreviation for Christ (hence Xmas meaning Christmas), his killer’s name being Christopoulos. As one who gets annoyed with religious types who are themselves annoyed with the term “Xmas” ("Stop taking Christ out of Christmas!” they shout, as if this were the only or even most important example of the phenomenon), it’s nice to see Asimov put this correction into print.
