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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Lesson 2: Anagrams

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Crosswords in other languages

The crossword was invented nearly exactly 100 years ago — yes, 2103 is its centenary! We all know that in that time it's spread throughout all English-speaking countries. But what about other countries? The answer is a resounding yes! In almost every country that I researched, they have crosswords. The forms are often a bit different from what we're used to — the grids are often non-symmetrical, 2-letter words are allowed, accented characters are often ignored, and sometimes the clues are written into the black squares. Here are some links to crossword sites from other countries, for your enjoyment. Afrikaans blokkieraaisel Part of a Chinese crossword Chinese 填字游戏 Danish kryds og tværs Dutch kruiswoordraadsel Finnish crosswords often include picture clues Finnish Sanaristikko French grids use a different numbering system French mots croises A German crossword German Kreuzworträtsel Greek σταυρόλεξο Part of a He

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