Veda #15 : Crosswords Puzzle

Day 15
Question by : None - "Who was the inventor of crosswords puzzle?"


Most of you probably knew this classic word game, yes, crossword puzzle. A crossword puzzle is a game of words where the player is given a hint and the number of letters. The player then fills in a grid of boxes by finding the right words. Today crosswords are among the most popular word games in history. There are people who make answering crossword puzzles a daily habit, or just a way to spend some boring time.

Arthur Wynne, the father of crossword puzzle

This game was invented by Liverpool journalist, Arthur Wynne. Once upon a time, Arthur remembering the childhood game he used to play when he was a kid. This game was called "Magic Square", based from Pompeii game where the player have to arrange the word horizontally and vertically, until it form a square. Like this example :
ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR
It is unusual because it can be read in any direction. At later game, he try to make a new creation by expanding the words, and more complex shape than only a square, and then he added more "key question" to reveal the answers.

Arthur Wynne's crossword puzzle was initially called word-cross and was diamond shaped. The name later switched to cross-word and then crossword. It was first published at December 21, 1913 at the pages of the Sunday New York World. It is very different from the current puzzles, since there were no black squares. The New York World was the only newspaper back then which started publishing crossword puzzles, and it was a huge success.

The first crossword puzzle published

The first book of crossword puzzles appeared in 1924, published by Simon and Schuster. This odd-looking book with a pencil attached to it, was an instant hit and crossword puzzles became the craze of 1924. Up until now, this game is still a major favorite for word game, and it developed into many kinds, such as Sudoku - crossword based, but instead of letters, they used numbers.