The First Crossword

This year marks the centenary of the crossword! It was invented by Arthur Wynne, a British journalist working in New York at the time, on the New York World. Part of his job was to put together a page of puzzles for the Sunday edition of the paper.

On 21 December 1913, he put in a new puzzle of his own invention — a Word-Cross Puzzle. A few weeks later a typesetter at the paper made a mistake, and set 'Cross Word Puzzle' instead of its original name, and then another mistake led to the hyphen being dropped — giving us Crossword.

I will go into the further history of the crossword in later posts, but for now, I thought you'd like to see what this first crossword puzzle looked like!

Later on Wynne added more black squares to separate words, and changed the numbering and the shape. But this diamond design was the very first one! Have a go at solving it, if you like :)
Answers are below (select them to view them). I've given links to more information on the hard words!

2-3 SALES
4-5 RECEIPT
6-7 MERE
10-11 DOVE
14-15 MORE
18-19 HARD
22-23 LION
26-27 EVENING
28-29 EVADE
30-31 ARE
8-9 FARM
12-13 RAIL
16-17 DRAW
20-21 TIED
24-25 SAND
10-18 DOH> definition of answer
6-22 MORAL
4-26 REVERIE
2-11 SERE > definition of answerE
19-28 DOVE
F-7 FACE
23-30 NEVA
1-32 RULE
33-34 NARD > definition of answer
N-8 NEIF > definition of answer
24-31 SIDE
3-12 SPAR
20-29 TANE, possibly T'ANE > discussion about the answer
5-27 TRADING
9-25 MIRED
13-21 LAD

Comments

American vs British crosswords

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Crosswords in other languages

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Lesson 2: Anagrams

One thing it's important to do with cryptic clues is to ignore the surface reading! The surface is the sense you get when reading a clue for the first time, the mental image it brings up. Apart from some very rare clue types, this is only going to lead you astray. What's vitally important to do is to read each clue, word by word, looking for the hidden meaning. Also, there are a few important things to note with the definition part of clues. Firstly — they will always be at the start or the end of the clue, but never in the middle (ie with bits of wordplay around them). Secondly — pinning down the definition is a major part of getting success in solving cryptic clues. And of course, once you've figured out which part is the definition, the remainder of the clue has to be the wordplay! ANAGRAMS So, on to the first of the cryptic devices that you'll find in every cryptic crossword: Anagrams! Anagrams are a very popular cryptic device, and e

Puzzling

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