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History[edit]
The title for the world's first crossword puzzle is disputed. The first puzzle that was called a "cross word puzzle" was written in 1862 by Our Young Folks in the United States. The first "cross word" was "dream".
Crossword puzzles are said to be the most popular and widespread word game in the world, yet have a short history. The first crosswords appeared in England during the 19th century. They were of an elementary kind, apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally, and printed in children's puzzle books and various periodicals.
Although Eugene T. Maleska is usually credited with the first crossword phrase (as opposed to a single world) in The New York Times, an 1862 puzzle in the Lady's Book had phrases that are considered modern such as the expression "I did it".
Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine St. Nicholas, published since 1873.[7]
Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica. It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares; it included horizontal and vertical clues.[8]
On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to "crossword".[9][10]
February 25, 2015 at 9:05am