of fifty-one year old Arthur Wynne, and appearing in the New York World newspaper in a Sunday edition.Wynne was an Englishman who had emigrated to the United States, and was employed by the World. His creation was the result of his editor asking for something new to add to the Fun section of the Sunday edition. Wynne modified a game he had played as a child called Magic Squares and created the crossword puzzle.
What we today call a crossword puzzle was originally called a word-cross, then cross-word, and finally crossword. It would become a fad in America during the "Roaring Twenties", and is still a popular newspaper feature throughout the world today. Simon and Schuster would publish the first crossword puzzle book in 1924.
What we today call a crossword puzzle was originally called a word-cross, then cross-word, and finally crossword. It would become a fad in America during the "Roaring Twenties", and is still a popular newspaper feature throughout the world today. Simon and Schuster would publish the first crossword puzzle book in 1924.
The first crossword puzzle was diamond shaped, with none of today's blacked-out spaces. It was created entirely by hand - compared to the computer generated puzzles that dominate the market today. A fun exercise is to have students try to find the answers to the original crossword puzzle. While their great grandparents would have had to use their heads, or perhaps a dictionary, they can search the Internet to find the answers.
It's not as easy to solve as one might think - a great challenge for the kids. 
For those of you NOT able to solve the puzzle above on your own, the answer is here.
Wynne obituary, Findtarget
PHOTO RESOURCES:
Arthur Wynne, Findtarget
Crossword puzzle, A Brief History of Crossword PuzzlesWynne obituary, Findtarget
-
No comments:
Post a Comment