I thought I was sitting on a juicy one here.

Last week in the New York Times crossword was this clue, pictured at left: “Chain whose name came from a Boston hotel whose sign was too expensive to remove.”

I read that, took a screenshot, and knew I had to write about it.

I thought it was a perfect thing to learn about.

(Bonus points to this crossword for having a ‘Pete Alonso’ answer in that bottom right corner, by the way. I forgot about that.)

Upon a little further research, there is not a lot exciting to this one beyond the clue itself.

I was thinking about leaving the word “Sheraton” out of this post and letting you guess the answer to this clue - or at least to see if you already knew this fact.

I thought there would be some kind of cool story.

But according to the Wikipedia (which is weirdly the only source I could find on this in an admittedly not-very-deep-diving search), these guys bought a hotel. On top of the hotel was a light-up ‘Sheraton’ sign, and instead of taking down the sign, they just named their hotel ‘Sheraton.’

And then I guess it became a huge hotel chain.

Which is kind of a fun little origin story.

I also like the fact that it happened locally. And it’s a little bit of a better story that it was the third hotel they bought and they just went all-in on the sign on top of the third purchase.

But I wish there was a little more to it. Or maybe that it was a cooler name. Hilton and Marriott are last names. I think my problem here might be that Sheraton sounds too much like a last name.

So maybe the story would be cooler if there was a cooler sign on top of the building.

Anyway, I learned something new. I guess that’s the important thing.