When was crossword puzzles invented

And, as an editor pointed out in a note to publisher Arthur Hay Sulzberger, the crossword would provide readers something to occupy time during coming blackout days. So Sulzberger decided to institute a puzzle. But, he reasoned, if the Times was going to have a crossword, it was going to be the best crossword in the nation. Farrar, who started her career as crossword editor at the New York World, insisted on the highest-quality puzzles possible. While other publications might allow for wild-looking grids and play fast and loose in terms of clues, Farrar instituted regulations that have now become industry standards.

Most of these were architectural — grids cannot contain unchecked squares, for example, and grids must have rotational symmetry. But she also made sure that puzzles passed the Sunday Breakfast Test; that is, clues and answers would be appropriate for all ages. In England, the crossword contained more serious threats to civilization than potential lack of civility. Most suspiciously of all, British intelligence officials traced the suspect puzzles to a single source. Lots of the boys did, he said——they found interesting words and slotted them into the grid.

After the British intelligence came knocking at this door, Dawe had demanded to know where his students had gotten these words. A Liverpool native, Wynne had emigrated to the United States at age 19, but before he did he might have seen some rudimentary word-form puzzles, which were popular in late 19th-century England. Thus Arthur Wynne is credited as the inventor of what is arguably the first mobile game—the American-style crossword puzzle, notable for its intellectual challenge and definitional yet amusing clues.

In , Richard Simon and M. The first run sold out quickly and the company ran additional printings. Other changes, like outlawing two-letter words, came later. America had now tasted the satisfaction of creating order out of chaos, the Zen of making something from nothing. Solving crosswords could fairly be called a craze. Crosswords were now being published almost everywhere—except in the New York Times , the last major metropolitan newspaper to offer the puzzle.

A bird. A pigeon. Opposed to less. Part of your head. What this puzzle is. A river in Russia. An animal of prey. To govern. The close of a day. An aromatic plant. To elude. A fist. The plural of is. To agree with. To cultivate.