F-Bomb: A Short History of F-Word Controversies - The Daily Beast

What could the word be? The second day, the newspaper told readers the word was “f__k”. The third-day story, as I recall, fell to John Kifner, then a waggish youngster, later a great foreign correspondent. Kifner filed a report referring to the word as “_uc_,” so alert readers might put together the second- and third-day reports and thus understand what the Times was saying. No dice. “I know what you’re getting at,” said the metropolitan editor, so “_uc_” never ran. Many Times readers are presumably still in the dark.