I understand why they wanted to get rid of the word cross. Too many people were venerating it as a way of salvation but Deuteronomy 21:22-23 was as an eye opener for me on whether it was a cross or a stake.
The NWT(Revised) reads:
"If a man commits a sin deserving the sentence of death and he has been put to death and you have hung him on a stake. his dead body should not remain all night on the stake..."
The older NWT version reads about the same but you have to get out the old 1984 Reference Bible to see the footnote of where the work "stake" is present. The footnote reads, Lit., "tree"; or, "wood".
If you look at the original Hebrew word used it is "eyts" which is nothing other than a tree. The exact same Hebrew word is used for the tree(s) in the middle of the garden of eden.
https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/definition/tree.htm
It was more likely a tree instead of some cut up wood in the above passages. A living tree has limbs which makes it easy to mount the deceased criminal for public display. A tree has limbs to hold out arms and so does a cross. The majority of the translations I looked up on Biblehub use the "tree" rendering.
At this point they were still wandering in the wilderness when Deuteronomy was being penned by Moses and so there was an abundance of trees all around the camp of Israel to use as warning sign posts. There was no need to cut some trees up as lumber (wood) and later use them as execution posts.
