Happy 95th birthday!
Sunday, December 21st, 2008
Today, the most popular and widespread word game in the world turns 95 years old.
It was on December 21, 1913, when Arthur Wynne, a Liverpool journalist, published a “word-cross” puzzle (see below) in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor.
Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the World, and spread to other newspapers; the Boston Globe for example was publishing them at least as early as 1917.
Initially, some viewed the crossword puzzle with alarm, and some expected (even hoped) that it would be be a short-lived fad. In 1924, The New York Times complained of the “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex. This is not a game at all, and it hardly can be called a sport… [solvers] get nothing out of it except a primitive form of mental exercise, and success or failure in any given attempt is equally irrelevant to mental development.” A clergyman called the working of crossword puzzles “the mark of a childish mentality” and said “There is no use for persons to pretend that working one of the puzzles carries any intellectual value with it”. In 1925 Time Magazine noted that nine Manhattan dailies and fourteen other big newspapers were carrying crosswords, and quoted opposing views as to whether “This crossword craze will positively end by June!” or “The crossword puzzle is here to stay!”. In 1925 the Times noted, with approval, a scathing critique of crosswords by The New Republic; but concluded that “Fortunately, the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast and in a few months it will be forgotten.” and in 1929 declared “The cross-word puzzle, it seems, has gone the way of all fads….”. In 1930 a correspondent noted that “Together with The Times of London, yours is the only journal of prominence that has never succumbed to the lure of the cross-word puzzle” and said that “The craze—the fad—stage has passed, but there are still people numbering it to the millions who look for their daily cross-word puzzle as regularly as for the weather predictions.” The Times, however, was not to publish a crossword puzzle until 1942.
Today, the most prestigious (and among the most difficult to solve) are the New York Times puzzles. The first editor of the New York Times crossword was Margaret Farrar, who was editor from 1942 to 1969. She was succeeded by Will Weng, who was succeeded by Eugene T. Maleska. Since 1993, they have been edited by Will Shortz, the fourth crossword editor in Times.
In the United Kingdom, the Sunday Express was the first newspaper to publish a crossword on November 2, 1924, a Wynne puzzle adapted for the UK. The first crossword in Britain, according to Tony Augarde in his “Oxford Guide to Word Games” (1984), was in “Pearson’s Magazine” for February 1922. (From Wikipedia)
- 2-3. What bargain hunters enjoy.
- 4-5. A written acknowledgment.
- 6-7. Such and nothing more.
- 10-11. A bird.
- 14-15. Opposed to less.
- 18-19. What this puzzle is.
- 22-23. An animal of prey.
- 26-27. The close of a day.
- 28-29. To elude.
- 30-31. The plural of is.
- 8-9. To cultivate.
- 12-13. A bar of wood or iron.
- 16-17. What artists learn to do.
- 20-21. Fastened.
- 24-25. Found on the seashore.
- 10-18. The fibre of the gomuti palm.
- 6-22. What we all should be.
- 4-26. A day dream.
- 2-11. A talon.
- 19-28. A pigeon
- F-7. Part of your head.
- 23-30. A river in Russia.
- 1-32. To govern.
- 33-34. An aromatic plant.
- N-8. A fist.
- 24-31. To agree with.
- 3-12. Part of a ship.
- 20-29. One.
- 5-27. Exchanging.
- 9-25. To sink in mud.
- 13-21. A boy.
