Clued In: The Origin Story of the Crossword Puzzle

Have you been caught up in the Wordle or Waffle puzzle popularity of the last few years? Or perhaps you’ve even tried Octordle, which challenges you to solve eight words at once. Maybe you prefer to stick to a word search instead.

But the granddaddy of all word puzzles is the crossword puzzle, which you’ll find in nearly every daily newspaper and many weekly papers and magazines. Back when airlines had print in-flight magazines, I could count on a crossword puzzle to pass the time while flying to my destination. They’ve become the subject of cartoons and have made an appearance in more than one movie.

When I heard that crossword puzzles derived from a 19th century English childhood game, I decided to research their history.

The Sator Square, found in the ruins
of Pompeii, spells out in Latin, "SATOR
AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS" (“the
farmer Arepo works a plow") any way
you read it.

I learned the earlier game, called a word square, actually dates back to Roman times. A simple type of acrostic, the objective of a word square is to arrange a group of words, all equal in length, to form the same words both across and down. The earliest known word square, called the Sator Square, was carved in stone and dates from Pompeii in the first century A.D. While 2-squares and 3-squares are easy to create in English, the word combinations become more difficult as the square gets to 6 or more letters in each word.

In 1913, The New York World published a puzzle page entitled “Fun” in its Sunday edition. For the Christmas issue, editor Arthur Wynne needed to fill space. A British immigrant, Wynne had grown up working word squares and decided to adapt it to make a new type of puzzle. He created what is considered the first crossword, arranging blank boxes into a diagonal shape. He provided clues for each word that was to be filled in, with the first word, “FUN,” already in place. Wynne called it a “Word-Cross Puzzle,” and it became the most popular feature on the page.

Arthur Wynne created what is considered the
first crossword puzzle for the Christmas 1914
issue of The New York World.

Wynne continued to play with shapes and eventually settled on using a square. In an era of handset type, the mind teasers were difficult to get right in the composing room and typesetters hated them. Errors were common, and at some point “Word-Cross” was set as “Crossword” and that name stuck.

At one point, The New York World considered dropping the puzzle, but readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions, convincing the publisher to reconsider.

In 1924, Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster noticed the popularity of the puzzles. They approached the newspaper and offered to buy the rights to selected crosswords for $25 each, with the goal of publishing them in a book. The publisher was skeptical and only a small number were printed initially. The book was promoted with a pencil attached to it and was an instant hit. In its first year, more than 300,000 copies sold, providing seed money to start what eventually became America’s largest book publishing company, Simon & Shuster.

The crossword puzzle craze caused a spike in dictionary sales, and dresses and shirts made from fabrics printed with black-and-white squares became popular.

Other newspapers began to include the word game, except for The New York Times, which called it “a primitive form of mental exercise.” Ironic, since the Times puzzle is now considered the epitome of the genre. It wasn’t until February 1942 that Times editors realized the puzzle could be a welcome distraction from the news of World War II for its readers.

A crossword fanatic ringing up a doctor in the middle
of the night to find the answer to a clue. 
Reproduction of a drawing by D.L. Ghilchilp, 1925.
Iconographic Collections

The addictive quality of crossword puzzles inspired the song, “Crossword Mamma You Puzzle Me,” in the musical Games of 1925, as well as a cartoon by D.H. Ghilchilp. More recently, crosswords have been highlighted in television and movies. One episode of The Simpsons featured Lisa entering a a crossword puzzle competition. In the 2007 movie Dan in Real Life, one of the family’s bonding activities during a holiday weekend involves the men versus the women attempting to solve the newspaper crossword first.

I have fond memories of working on crossword puzzles with my mother and, sometimes, with a college-aged nephew.

Have crossword puzzles been a part of your life?

Sources:

A History of Crosswords - HubPages
Students | Britannica Kids | Homework Help
Crossword Facts for Kids
A Brief History of Word Games by Adrienne Raphel
The History of Word Games: Word Squares to Wordle – The Raider Wire
Puzzles In History

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. An unpublished novel, Shifting Currents, placed second in the inspirational category of the nationally recognized Maggie Awards. Learn more at www.MarieWellsCoutu.com.

Her historical short story, “All That Glistens,” was included in the 2023 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction collection and is now available free when you sign up for Marie's newsletter here. In her newsletter, she shares about her writing, historical tidbits, recommended books, and sometimes recipes.