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Apr 4, 2022 · “Crosswords were the Beatles of 1924,” Petherbridge, who would go on to become the New York Times’ inaugural crossword editor under her married name, Margaret Farrar, later remarked.
When Gaffney wrote his piece in 2006, he was one of the few writers who still wrote crosswords without the help of a database. In 2016, he’s still at it, writes Oliver Roeder for FiveThirtyEight ...
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Mar 17, 2020 · Farrar became the paper’s first crossword puzzle editor, the founding dynast of the Hapsburgs of the crossword empire. It is in the modern era that this book loses its lapidary elegance. Raphel ...
Sep 25, 2022 · September 25, 2022. Crossword puzzles got their start in 1913, when Arthur Wynne was putting together the Christmas edition of “Fun,” the jokes and puzzles supplement he managed for the New York World. Believing that readers needed a new challenge, the Liverpool native designed a puzzle with a numbered, diamond-shaped grid with an empty center.
- Puzzle Creator
- The First Crossword Puzzle
- The Crossword Craze
- Crossword Rules
- The Cryptic Crossword
- Leaked Secrets in Crossword During Wartime?
- Bonus Factoids
- Sources
- Comments
It’s surprising to learn that crossword puzzles are only about 100 years old. You imagine a grizzled monk in his unheated cell in the 13th century labouring over an illuminated manuscript trying to trick his fellow holy men into using the wrong Latin word. Having been duped into writing “canis” for four-legged beast instead of “equus,” Brother Wilh...
The New York Worldran a weekly puzzle page entitled “Fun” in its Sunday edition. Its creation was entrusted to a British immigrant called Arthur Wynne. For the Christmas 1913 issue of the newspaper, Wynne invented something he called a “Word-Cross Puzzle.” It was a diamond shape of boxes with clues to the words that had to be filled in. The word FU...
Briefly, The New York Worldtoyed with dropping the crossword, but wisely listened to the counsel of its readers who threatened subscription cancellations. In 1924, a young man fresh out of Columbia University was trying to get a toehold in the publishing industry. He spotted the popularity of crosswords, and he and his business partner went to the ...
Over time, the organization of crossword puzzles became codified. Although it is now considered the gold standard of U.S. crossword puzzle creators, The New York Times long held itself aloof from what it called “a primitive form of mental exercise.” It wasn’t until February 1942 that The Timessuccumbed; here are a few of the conventions that apply ...
The first American crosswords tended to focus on general knowledge and word definitions. Great Lake (Erie) gets many a compiler out of a tight corner who has run into a shortage of vowels. Likewise Jai Alai and Oreo. When the craze crossed the Atlantic and landed on the desks of English newspaper editors, it took an evil turn. Enter the cryptic cro...
In the month prior to the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, a remarkable series of secret code words for the attack appeared in The Daily Telegraph’s crossword puzzle. “Utah” and “Omaha,” two of the landing beaches, and “Overlord,” the code name for the entire operation appeared as answers to clues. Other code words such as Mulberry (artificial harbo...
In 1924, The Times of London huffed and puffed in dudgeon about the popularity of crosswords. It called them “a menace because it is making devastating inroads on the working hours of every rank of...One of the main forces in the creation of cryptic crossword puzzles was the British school master Derrick Somerset Macnutt. Understandably, he operated behind a pseudonym, probably to protect himse...Liz Westwoodfrom UK on December 29, 2018: This is a fascinating article. I always assumed that crosswords had been around for longer than this. I was amused at the fumings of The Times, especially given that their crossword is now so well known. Ellison Hartleyfrom Maryland, USA on December 27, 2018: Cool article! I'm no good at crosswords, I'm mor...
May 19, 2023 · Key Takeaways: Crossword puzzles have a rich history that dates back to ancient word squares, gaining massive popularity with Wynne’s first modern puzzle in the New York World. The New York Times, once a skeptic of crosswords, embraced the trend during World War II, contributing to the puzzle’s status in popular culture.
Apr 21, 2024 · At about that same time, I started making crosswords. The speed-solving began in 2015 or 2016. In the summer of 2016, I was registered by my very kind parents for the indie tournament Lollapuzzoola.
