The NYC Wingdings Controversy of 1992

In 1992, only days after Windows 3.1 went on sale, people discovered something unsettling in one of its new fonts. Type the letters NYC in Wingdings and you get a skull and crossbones, a Star of David and a thumbs up. Here is how it looks: 🕱︎✡︎👍︎.

The discovery spread quickly and became one of the first viral stories about a computer font. This is what actually happened, what Microsoft said, and how the company answered the joke five years later.

What typing NYC in Wingdings shows

Wingdings replaces each keyboard character with a picture. Three capital letters produce the controversial sequence:

Read together, the three pictures looked to some people like a hateful message about New York City. In the tense atmosphere of the early 1990s, the story drew attention from newspapers and readers who wanted to know whether the order was deliberate.

Microsoft’s response

Microsoft strongly denied any intent. The company explained that the arrangement of symbols in the font was essentially random. Wingdings was assembled in 1990 by combining glyphs from three existing fonts, Lucida Icons, Lucida Arrows and Lucida Stars, licensed from the type designers Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. The symbols were placed on keys for practical reasons, not to spell anything.

That explanation makes sense once you look at the whole font. Capital letters A to L are mostly hands and faces, M to Z mix warning signs, weather and religious symbols, and the zodiac follows on the punctuation and lower case keys. With around a hundred symbols spread across the keyboard, some three letter combinations will inevitably look like a message.

Coincidence and pattern seeking

People are very good at finding meaning in random arrangements, a tendency psychologists call apophenia. Once a story says “type NYC”, everyone who tries it sees the same three pictures and the idea feels confirmed. Nobody tells the story of the thousands of other letter combinations that produce nothing interesting at all.

You can test this yourself in the Wingdings translator. Try your own initials, your city or random words. Some will look oddly meaningful, and most will not.

The answer in Webdings: I love New York

Microsoft had the last laugh. In 1997 the company released Webdings, a new picture font designed by a team that included Vincent Connare. This time the letters N, Y and C were chosen on purpose: an eye, a heart and a city skyline. Typed together they read “I love New York”, a nod to the famous I Love New York logo.

Here is NYC in Webdings: 👁︎🎔︎🏙︎. You can try it in the Webdings translator.

The same letters in all four Microsoft dingbat fonts

How the story came back in 2001

The NYC episode set the stage for a much darker rumour. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, a chain email claimed that typing “Q33 NY” in Wingdings predicted the attacks. That claim was false from start to finish, and we explain why in the Q33 NY hoax, debunked.

What the episode tells us about Wingdings

The NYC story is a reminder that Wingdings is not a language. It has no grammar and no hidden meanings, only a one to one swap between keys and pictures. That is exactly what makes it fun for secret messages and puzzles, and why any “hidden message” found in it is really a message people bring to it.

Frequently asked questions

What does NYC mean in Wingdings?

Typing NYC in Wingdings gives a skull and crossbones, a Star of David and a thumbs up. Microsoft said the order of the symbols was random.

Was the NYC message in Wingdings intentional?

Microsoft strongly denied it. The font was assembled from existing Lucida symbol fonts, and with around a hundred symbols some combinations will always look meaningful.

What is NYC in Webdings?

An eye, a heart and a city skyline, which reads as I love New York. The Webdings designers placed them there on purpose.