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A crossword (or crossword puzzle) is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues.
May 19, 2023 · Early Origins: The Birth of a Brainteaser. Before the dawn of crosswords, as we know them, there were precursors that laid the foundation for these captivating puzzles. Word squares and acrostics, for instance, toyed with language and word games long before crosswords took center stage.
Jul 21, 2015 · Crossword puzzles, like so many things I love, originated in England in the 19th century, although they were first widely published in the United States. They were a derivation of the “word square,” a children’s puzzle that looks exactly how you imagine it looking.
Sep 25, 2022 · Scholars think that Wynne based his game on the rudimentary word-form puzzles that were popular in late 19th century England as well as the “Sator” square, an ancient, five-word Latin palindrome.
In fact, the crossword puzzle was born in December 1913, on the eve of World War I. Arthur Wynne, an editor at the New York World, needed a new game for that paper’s FUN section. So he printed...
Sep 24, 2023 · Puzzles and games involving words crossing each other date back to at least the first century AD, with the first known appearance of a word square showing up in Pompeii prior to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Mar 16, 2009 · East Carolina University English associate professor Gregg Hecimovich has unraveled word puzzles from Victorian England with his new book, “Puzzling the Reader: Riddles in Nineteenth-Century British Literature,” (Peter Lang, 2008) and a second work focusing on Jane Austen’s “Emma.”
