The History of the Crossword
People have been unwinding by sitting down and working crossword puzzles in newspapers and magazines since the late 1800s as they seek gratification to fill their leisure time. The game involves arranging words in sets of squares inside of a printed grid. There are several types of grids to play on; your options are the American style grid, the British Style grid, Japanese Style grid and the Swedish Style grid. A crossword puzzle is a word puzzle where the goal is to fill in all the white spaces with letters, words or phrases and where the clues are sometimes given as quotes or expressions. Crossword puzzles can be educational as well as entertaining for both children and adults, because they make you stop, think and remember as you look for the right answers to the puzzle. Words are spelled out throughout the grid going in directions of up and down and across; with letters overlapping one another while forming words. To form the correct words, players must answer the clues that are given with the game. The clues tell you what direction a particular word is being played. If you choose the correct letters to fit into the boxes, you spell out a legitimate word that connects to another word going in the opposite direction.
Most crossword puzzle games have an underlying theme, which means that most of the words of the puzzle have something to do with the puzzle's subject matter. As popular as crossword puzzles are today, they were even more popular in the 1920s. When deciding to try a crossword puzzle, you have different styles to choose from. Crossword Puzzle options are Criss-Cross, Standard American and Cryptic.
Of the different types, the Criss-Cross or Freeform crossword is the easiest to create and play, and the best way to learn how to play the word game. In this puzzle, you have connecting words that go across and down as letters join one word with another. As with all crossword puzzles, clues are given so that you can try and come up with the right words to complete the puzzle. Each clue is numbered and that corresponding number is written in the white boxes of the puzzle, showing where letters go and what direction a word is being played. You will find such puzzles being used in classrooms as students learn about different subjects in school, subjects such as spelling, science and history can be taught using the Criss-Cross or freeform crossword puzzle because it is so simple.
The Standard American Crossword is a word puzzle which is a little tougher than the Criss-cross and it too has black and white squares. This puzzle has the same pattern, no matter how you look at it and words being played have to have at least three letters. The clues to this puzzle are given as definitions of a particular word that is to fit inside the puzzle. When playing this puzzle, you can choose between easy, hard and the mastermind, when you really want a challenge. In the Standard American Crossword, only 1/6 of the puzzle board is covered in black boxes. Most Standard American Crossword puzzle books can be found in major bookstores, grocery markets and drug stores where reading material is sold. You can even find these puzzles to play on your electronic devices.
For the Cryptic Crossword, the puzzle box is structured like a lattice frame, or an entanglement of black and white boxes. However, do keep in mind that though there are black and white boxes, only the white boxes are used for lettering.
The first crossword as we know it today that made it to print appeared on December 21, 1913. It appeared in the Sunday New York World newspaper. The person behind this word puzzle idea was Arthur Wynne, who was originally from England. He came to United States as an immigrant. This young man worked at the New York World Newspaper company and was in charge of the fun page. His editor was looking for a new idea to go on the fun page of the paper and he asked Wynne to come up with something imaginative and entertaining. As a child, Arthur Wynne played with a word game called "The Magic Squares," he took this challenge and reinvented the original concept of the Magic Squares. His new invention was larger and the grid was diamond shaped. The entire board was absent of any black squares, making the grid more compound and an intricate structure. He also changed the instructions, creating easy clues for the puzzle and doing away with the old complicated word hints. Wynne's new puzzle was a feature in the "mental exercise" section of the paper, showing that this new and inspired word puzzle was a brain teaser. His crossword puzzle was featured in the London Times in 1930, after making its debut in 1913 in the United States.
The first created crossword puzzle was actually called a "wordcross." Subscribers to the newspaper became excited about this new feature in their Sunday paper and it wasn't long before it began to be published every day of the week. The New York World newspaper was the only media outlet publishing the puzzle until 1924. After that year, crosswords began to be published in their own specific books. The first crossword puzzle book was published by Fledgling Publishing House. It was such a big hit that soon after, Simon and Schuster book publisher began publishing them too.
It was discovered that people before 1913, also had a form of word puzzles; they called it "Word Squares." Unlike the hints and clues today, Word Squares were played using pictures as hints and clues to solve the puzzle. It was an educational tool that made learning fun. Adults did not start playing these word puzzles until after 1913. The popular New York Times didn't publish a Sunday Newspaper puzzle until 1942; it went over so well however, that by 1950, they were publishing daily puzzles for their readers.
Today, any major newspaper will have a word puzzle section. You will find such things as word searches, crosswords, acrostics, and cryptic puzzles. You can even do puzzles without frames and puzzles involving numbers instead of words as in Sudoku.