Pardon the "Snappy Answer...," but the NYTimes Sunday Crossword not only has Al Jaffee as the keystone theme answer, but all the other main answers are humorous inventions in his comics that in fact became reality years later. In particular: Automatic Redial on telephones (1961), Spell Checkers ('67), Snowboarding ('65), Three-blade razors ('79), and Graffiti-proof Buildings ('82).

I haven't independently verified these, but I do recall other items that appeared as jokes in Mad, and later turned up for real: "Shpratz(sp?)", a spray to give your car the "new-car smell"; also an unnamed device that would keep your car from running if you weren't paying attention to the road (as depicted, for instance, because you were ogling someone you were passing on the sidewalk, though come to think of it, maybe it just snapped your head back to face forward).

> Hey, he was one of main answers in today's NYT Sunday Crossword today. Probably coincidence.

For his hundredth birthday? Sounds less like a coincidence and more like a tribute.

Not a coincidence. It rarely is, the crosswords are chosen pretty deliberately. In general, if you want the back story to a crossword in the NYT, they have a column - in this case, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2...

I do The NY Times crossword every day. As stated it’s very much not a coincidence. The puzzles tend to be timely. They also tend to build on each other so doing them regularly make the weekend puzzles more doable too.

Note for anyone not familiar The NY Times crosswords build in difficulty through the week. Saturday is actually the most technically challenging. Sunday’s is the biggest. Thursday’s usually have some sort of trick you need to figure out like a rebus square (takes multiple letters in a single square) or answers that wrap around.