Clues to birth of a puzzle mania

By NEIL PORTEN

The first crossword puzzle appeared in the New York World on December 21, 1913. Its creator was Arthur Wynne, an American journalist who had emigrated from Liverpool.

The diamond-shaped puzzle had the title Word-Cross which, thanks to a typesetting error, became Cross-Word and eventually just Crossword. It became instantly popular and appeared every week.

From the beginning readers sent in their own contributions and Wynne used these regularly. But typesetting errors dogged the crossword and eventually the decision was made to drop it. Following howls of protest from the readers it was reinstated after just one week.

The first puzzle appeared in Britain in 1922 and the first Times crossword on February 1, 1930.

In 1924 two newly graduated US journalists named Richard Simon and Lincoln Schuster set up a publishing business and, looking for something to publish, settled on a book of 50 New York World crossword puzzles. Around 750,000 copies sold in a few weeks and a worldwide craze was launched.

In the 1920s crossword competitions were fiercely fought and songs appeared with titles such as Cross Word Mamma You Puzzle Me (But Papa's Gonna Figure You Out). According to Hal S. Barron, a US history professor who spent a six-month sabbatical studying the history of crosswords "some crossword fans became obsessed by the puzzles, foreshadowing present problems with the internet. In newspaper interviews, a Philadelphia doctor wondered how to keep the crosswords from eating 'not only into leisure hours, but into those supposed to be spent in working'."

Cryptic crosswords were an invention of British compilers, the most famous being E. Powys Mathers (alias Torquemada), A. F. Ritchie (Afrit) and D. S. Macnutt (Ximenes). Ximenes succeeded Torquemada as the Observer's weekly puzzle-setter from 1939 until his death in 1971. Ritchie and Macnutt codified the now widely accepted rules of fair clues for cryptic crosswords. These devilish compilers attracted fanatical and famous solvers, including P. G. Wodehouse, Leonard Bernstein and Colin Dexter, the detective novelist. Dexter named his most famous character and his assistant after two prizewinning Ximenes solvers, Sir Jeremy Morse and D. W. Lewis. Dexter also provided the foreword for a new edition of Macnutt's seminal Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword. A description of the book and an excerpt from the first chapter is at Amazon.com.

The internet and browsers with interactive capabilities have created a new wave of interest in crosswords.

Links


The history of crossword puzzles

Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword

The world's first crossword puzzle

Herald online crosswords