1904 | 1908 | References

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1904

• People's Home Journal: blended squares [on right]

1908

• Hydrox cookie Oreo not produced until 1912
• The Sad History of Hydrox Cookies, Which Were Probably Doomed
  Because They Were Called Hydrox 5/17/2017

References

• Wikipedia: 1900s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 1: 1900-1910
  Theory of Relativity; Toaster Heating Element; Football's Forward Pass; Tanks; Vacuum Tube; Gas-Powered Mercedes;
  Nintendo (playing cards); A Trip to the Moon; Bakelite; Radio; FBI; Kodak Brownie; Wired; 10/8/2012
• Paleofuture (predictions): 1900s
• 24 Strange Predictions For the 21st Century MF; 9/3/2020
• A Look at the 13 Most Influential Inventions from the Early 1900s 7/14/2019
• 8 Inventions of 20th Century that Changed the World 4/29/2019

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Highlights | 1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 |
References: General, Oreo

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Highlights

• 1913: Wynne's "FUN Word-Cross" appears in New York World
• 1916: cross-word in Pittsburgh Press; 1917: Boston Globe

1912

• Oreo introduced by National Biscuit Company (Nabisco); 3/6/1912
• OREO: popular vowel-rich, crossword 'filling' with same color scheme

1913

• "FUN's Word-Cross Puzzle" (Sun, 12/21/1913) by Arthur Wynne
  in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World
• The only directions:... "Fill in the small squares with words
  which agree with the following definitions."
• 33-34 clue: Aromatic plant (4 letters)=
  NARD (it grows mainly in the Himalayas; occurs in Bible)
• N-8 clue: A fist (4 letters; 1 letter is N)= NEIF
• 10-18 clue: The fibre of the gomuti palm (3 letters)=
  DOH (now more likely clued as Homer Simpson outburst;
  or PLAY compound suffix; probably not: DNS Over HTTPS acronym)
• "Four weeks after the puzzle first appeared,... typesetters at the newspaper
  inadvertently transposed the words in the title to read 'Cross-Word.' For some reason,
  the name stuck -- and so did the puzzle. When the World tried to drop it a few months
  later, readers were so hostile that the paper reversed itself and decided to make it a
  permanent feature of the puzzle page instead. Though the puzzles were popular with
  readers, they were decidedly unpopular with editors. Crosswords were difficult to print
  and were plagued with typographical and other errors. In fact, no other newspaper
  wanted any part of them." ~Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader (BUJBR)
• "Wynne asked The World to pay to patent the crossword,... but
  they replied that 'such puzzles are hardly worth the trouble or expense;
  it was just one of those puzzle fads that people would get tired of within six months.'
  The editor detested how the 'silly squares spoiled the look of his paper'"
  ~T. Campbell. On Crosswords: Thoughts, Studies, Facts and Snark About a 100-Year-Old Pastime
• Wynne's 1st puzzle web version; 12/21/1913
• Wynne's 2nd puzzle $; .pdf; NYT; 12/28/1913
• National Crossword Day is Dec 21st
• Jeopardy: Clues from the 1st Crossword video: 0:56; 6/8/2021
• Word Cross Puzzle Morphs to Crossword Success US Copyright Office; .pdf; 4/2015
• Crossword centennial: 2013 many articles & puzzles
• Crossword inventor honored with puzzling Google doodle 12/20/2013
• History of the Crossword Puzzle | Illuminating Moments in American History
  video: 2:13; How did Arthur Wynne go from musician and journalist to inventing crossword puzzles? 12/20/2013
• Searching for the crossword inventor: a Clearwater connection 11/1/2013
• Can You Solve the World's First Crossword Puzzle?
• "Write a history of crosswords in the style of a conspiracy theorist." by ChatGPT (AI chatbot)
  "All right, here goes: The history of crosswords is a shadowy one, full of intrigue and deceit.
  It all began with a man named Arthur Wynne, who worked as a journalist for the New York World newspaper.
  But little did the world know, Wynne was not who he seemed. He was actually a secret agent,
  working for a shadowy organization that sought to control the masses through the use of mind-altering puzzles.
  In December of 1913, Wynne unveiled his latest creation: the 'word-cross' puzzle. It was published in the
  Sunday edition of the New York World, and it quickly became a sensation. But all was not as it seemed.
  Hidden within the puzzle were subliminal messages, designed to brainwash the unsuspecting public.
  The crossword craze only grew from there, with other newspapers jumping on the bandwagon and publishing
  their own versions of the puzzle. But make no mistake -- these were not mere games." more
• "The first known crossword puzzle was published in The New York World in 1913.
  It was constructed by Arthur Wynne, a British-born editor, who called it 'Word-Cross.'
  The puzzle’s grid was shaped like a hollow diamond and had some unchecked squares;
  that is, some letters were part of a word in only one direction and not both.
  The first Across entry already had three letters written in the squares: F-U-N.
  The puzzle format became a regular feature in the 'Fun' section of the paper.
  At some point, an illustrator made a typesetting error and published the puzzle
  with the title 'Cross-Word.' The name stuck!
  
  Crosswords became increasingly popular in the early 1920s, but there weren’t many
  standardized rules. For instance, some puzzles had black squares, while others
  just had irregular shapes. Some had all-over interlock, while others had a grid
  that was divided into different sections by black squares. In the mid-1920s,
  the Amateur Cross Word Puzzle League of America worked to standardize crossword
  puzzles, making many of the rules that we still follow today.
  
  In 1942, Margaret Farrar became the first editor of the New York Times Crossword.
  She had worked with Wynne as a proofreader for The New York World and went on
  to edit its puzzles as well as puzzles for Simon & Schuster puzzle books.
  Over the years as an editor, Farrar ended up playing a huge role in the
  standardization of crossword puzzles. She required grids to be square in shape,
  with symmetrically placed blocks. She also banned two-letter words, specifying
  that all entries be at least three letters long. While Wynne is credited with
  the invention of the crossword puzzle, Farrar is a major figure who helped shape
  the 'Word-Cross' into the crossword puzzles we solve today."
  ~Christina Iverson, Easy Mode newsletter, 4/12/2024

1914

• After constructing the World's first seven crosswords himself, Wynne solicited submissions
  from his readers. In February, Mrs. M. B. Wood became the first constructor given a byline.
• Ambrose Bierce dies: journalist, satirist, writer.
  "Egotism, n:... Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen."
  -- often attributed erroneously to Bierce, who died shortly after crosswords were invented (1913)
  -- but "crossword" not coined until 1930, and NYT didn't publish crosswords until 1942!
• Tinkertoy Construction Set
• World War I: 1914-1918

1915

• Wynne used diamond-shaped grids, but the shapes were not standardized: in Jan. 1915,
  for example, one week’s grid was in the shape of an F; the next week, a U; finally, an N.
  "That spells FUN for every one of FUN's puzzle solvers" ~Arthur Wynne.
• On March 7, 1915, Wynne painted a picture for his readers of the FUN flood of submissions:
  “The editor of FUN receives an average of twenty-five cross-words every day from readers.
  Considering that only one cross-word is published per week you can possibly imagine
  what the office of FUN is beginning to look like. Everywhere your eyes rest on boxes,
  barrels and crates, each one filled with cross-word puzzles patiently awaiting publication.
  However, the editor of FUN hopes to use them all in time. The puzzle editor has kindly
  figured out that the present supply will last until the second week in December, 2100."

1916

• The Pittsburgh Press; the puzzle: 6/11/1916; crossword p73

1917

• Boston Globe; examples: 3/4/1917, 8/19/1917
• Happy 100th birthday, crossword puzzle! the Globe's earliest puzzle -- and a century of gaming obsession; 12/22/2013

References

• section: Oreo
• Wikipedia: 1910s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 2: 1910s
  Flip-Flop Circuit; Panama Canal; Golf in US; Fighter Planes; Prohibition; Erector Set; First Crossword Puzzle;
  Electric Household Refrigerator; Modern Assembly Line; Superconductivity; Nikon; Snap-On Wrench; Wired; 10/25/2012
• Paleofuture: 1910s
• Britannica: This Day in History: December 21
• A Look at the 17 Most Influential Inventions from 1911-1920 7/16/2019
• 10 Lifehacks from 100 Years Ago
  How To: Make a Fire Extinguisher; Extract a Splinter;Preserve Eggs; Fell a Tree; Stop a Mad Dog;
  Keep Plants Watered While Away on Holiday; Light a Match in the Wind; Make a Chair to Cross a Stream;
  Rescue Someone from Electric Shock; Make a Water Filter -- from Gallaher's Cigarettes; 7/21/2013
• What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years
  The Ladies' Home Journal; What the Future Looked Like 100 Years Ago -- and 5 Predictions That Came True; Giz; 2/24/2012

Oreo

• see: Solving: Acquire Vocabulary: many OREO definitions
  and some classic OREO-themed puzzles and definitions
• Wikipedia: OREO (disambiguation) ethnic slur, operating system (Android), sculpture, spider, ...
• the 'Oreo-cookie' cow; Wikipedia: Belted Galloways
• 'Oreo': common name for anything with black&white shades, e.g., 'tuxedo' bicolor cat
• Could Oreo Cookies Solve New York’s Rat Problem? NYT; 12/17/2021
• Why Does Oreo Keep Releasing New Flavors? Oreo has introduced 65 flavors since
  Birthday Cake Oreo in 2012; the new flavors function as advertisements for the original; NYT; 12/16/2020
• Oreo Built a 'Doomsday' Vault to Protect Its Recipe and Cookies
  Global Oreo Vault is just down the road from the famed Svaldbard Global Seed Vault in Norway; 10/26/2020
• Cherry Cola Oreos? Crazy, yes, but not as much as Avocado Oreos kettle corn; pina colada; USA; 4/30/2018
• Android 8.0 Oreo is official, starts rollout to devices Ars; 8/21/2017
• When Just Vanilla Won't Do, How About a Blueberry Pie Oreo? NYT; 7/3/2017
• Fireworks Oreos? A Reporter Digests NYT; 7/3/2017
• Oreo debuts new flavor, offers $500K for next cookie Firework Oreo ('pop rocks' in the creme); USA; 5/9/2017
• How to Cheat at the Oreo Twist Game: Lab Tested, Engineer Approved Giz; 10/16/2016
• The World Spent $2.5 Billion on Oreos in 2014 2/13/2015
• How the Oreo was Invented Giz; 1/12/2015
• Is it true that Oreos are more addictive to lab rats than cocaine?
  more sensational than scientific; Giz; 10/16/2013
• The "Oreo" -- An "Awakening" sculpture at Villanova U.; 8/13/2013
• On Oreo's 101st Birthday, 13 Facts About The Cookie That Will Blow Your Mind 3/6/2013
• The Oreo Turns 100, With a Nod to the Past NYT; 2/27/2012
• Getting the lard out: The koshering of the Oreo cookie in 1997;
  original recipe called for pig lard; 2/26/2008

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Highlights | Craze | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 | 1929 | References

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Highlights

• Many "firsts" for crosswords in publications and culture. Much debate about fads and obsessions.
• 1921: Margaret Farrar: crossword editor at New York World; first crossword dictionary
• 1922: first UK magazine with crossword: Pearson's
• 1924: The Cross Word Puzzle Book -- 1st book ever published by Simon & Schuster.
• UK newspaper Daily Express
• crossword rules, e.g., rotational symmetry; interlocking;
  ~1/6 black squares; word choice; clue conventions
• New York Herald-Tribune's National All Comers Cross Word Puzzle Tournament

• 
  

  song: "Crossword Mama You Puzzle Me (But Papa's Gonna Figure You Out)"

• 1925: cryptic crossword invented in UK
• musical revue: "Puzzles of 1925"
• animated short Disney film: "Alice Solves the Puzzle"
• mystery story: "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will"
• 1926: book: "The Truth About George" by PG Wodehouse

Crossword Craze & Quotes

• "Crossword puzzles became a way of life in the 1920s...
  Newspapers started adding them to increase circulation.
  Sales of dictionaries soared, and foot traffic in libraries increased dramatically.
  Clothes made with black-and-white checked fabric were the rage. The B&O Railroad
  put dictionaries on all of its mainline trains for crossword-crazy commuters." ~BUJBR
• "Another reason for the extraordinary success of crossword puzzles... according to
  Columbia University professors of psychology H. E. Jones and Prescott Leeky, was
  the low cost of working them and "The puzzles appeal to the sex instinct
  in that they supply a new reason for social gatherings, of young particularly."
  ~Trivia on History of the Crossword Puzzle
• "The Pennsylvania Railroad... printed crosswords on the backs of menus in dining cars."
• "Pickpockets in hotel lobbies,... pretending to need help with a crossword,
  would steal a man's wallet while he was examining the puzzle."
• "A New York man was arrested because... he refused to leave a restaurant at its 2 a.m. closing time.
  The reason -- He hadn't finished solving his crossword puzzle."
• "The working of cross-word puzzles is... the mark of a childish mentality. There is no use
  for persons to pretend that working one of the puzzles carries any intellectual value with it."
  ~NYT: 12/23/1924, p.18; "Condemns" Cross-Word Fad"
• The influence on the American vocabulary was audible.
  "Anybody you met on the street... could tell you the name of the Egyptian sun-god
  or provide you with the two-letter word which meant a printer’s measure."
  ~Frederick Lewis Allen, in Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s
• In the 1920s, as now, there were 2 schools of puzzle solution fans:...
  those who grimly armed themselves with dictionaries, gazetteers, and classical Latin
  phrase books, and free souls "who'd sooner die in the flames than consult a reference book.
  The crossword puzzle was America's favorite licit indoor activity in the days before television."
  ~Publishers Weekly
• A humorous squib in The Boston Globe has a wife ordering her husband... to run out and
  "rescue the papers, the part I want is blowing down the street." "What is it you're so keen about?"
  "The Cross-Word Puzzle. Hurry, please, that's a good boy."
• "The latest craze to strike libraries is the crossword puzzle...
  the puzzle 'fans' swarm to the dictionaries and encyclopedias so as to drive away readers
  and students who need these books in their daily work, can there be any doubt of the
  Library's duty to protect its legitimate readers?" ~New York Public Library
• "Thoughtful working of cross word puzzles can not fail to...
  make the average American a more careful and fluent user of good English."
  ~Frederick (Maryland) Daily News

• 
  

  "Some folks were driven over the edge by the craze... A Chicago woman sued
  her husband for divorce, claiming 'he was so engrossed in solving crosswords
  that he didn't have time to work.' The judge ordered the man to 'limit himself
  to 3 puzzles a day and devote the rest of his time to domestic duties.'" ~BUJBR

• "Judging from the number of solvers in the subway... and 'L' trains,
  the crossword puzzle bids fair to become a fad with New Yorkers."
  "Jottings About Town" in first issue of The New Yorker
• Range of opinions about crossword longevity:...
  "This crossword craze will positively end by June!" and
  "The crossword puzzle is here to stay!" ~Time: The Press: Barometer (1/5/1925)
• "Yale University defeated Harvard in the first-ever... intercollegiate
  crossword tournament. The team from Harvard stumbled on the final clue:
  'a slight convex curve in the shaft of a column.'" ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p.11, 12/17/2017
• The main interest among fans in the 1920s was in the puzzle as
  an aid to language... development. The literary intelligentsia
  including Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Broun, and Ruth Hale,
  took up the puzzle and fed this interest. Arthur Maurice,
  former editor of The Bookman, claimed to have found 40 words*
  which had grown unfamiliar through general mental laziness
  but were now resurrected due to the crossword puzzle craze
  -- suddenly popping up in everyday conversation.
  Maurice: "The constructive work of the cross-word puzzle lies
  in the awakening of the mind and tongue to the thousand and
  one words that have so long been dormant. It is the subtle
  restoration of these words, a direct result of the crossword puzzle,
  that is galvanizing casual talk into a new and healthy flexibility.
  A cathedral, for example, is no longer a blur of vague images.
  The picture has cleared with the rescued understanding of
  'apse' and 'nave.'" *the 40 words (mostly short and heavy on
  vowels, many of them are still very much with us): Abet, acute,
  adapt, amend, ape (as a verb), apt, aroma, asset, aver;
  Ban and bare (as verbs); Carp (as a verb), cite, curt, curtail;
  Eke, elan, elate, emit, eon, etch, err; Foment; Goad; Inert,
  ire; Leer (as a verb); Maim, mar; Nee; Ooze, omit; Pry; Retard;
  Sate, seer, sever, smudge (as a verb); Terse; Vat.
  ~The Literary Digest of June 6, 1925
• "A New York Telephone Co. employee shot his... wife
  when she wouldn't help with a crossword puzzle." ~BUJBR
• Popular interest in the 1920s is shown by aids which were marketed ...
  to help puzzle-solvers. One was a crossword "finder," an indicator with a series of
  movable alphabets on paper strips which were supposed to aid in forming proper
  letter arrangements before they were written in the squares. The device allowed the
  trial of test words, "saving erasures and changes on the puzzle chart. The indicator,
  which can be carried in the pocket, does not require a pencil for marking and its
  construction permits as ready operation as a small adding machine."
  ~Popular Mechanics; March, 1925
• "A woman who has small children... and has to be in her home a great deal of the time
  needs something to make her think and use her mental faculties. Cross-wording is just the thing."
• These two sources refer to many 1920s newspaper articles (most included below):
  The New York Times hated crossword puzzles before it embraced them 2/15/2022
  Crosswords: the meow meow of the 1920s Idling workers, distracted housewives and a decline
  in reading: Alan Connor looks at the great crossword panic of the 1920s; Guard; 12/15/2011
• The Cross-Word Puzzles Bridegroom New Britain (CT) Herald, p. 10; 7/18/1924
• Crossworditis Widow Has Her Court Innings Kenosha (WI) News. p. 15; 11/7/1924
• A Familiar Form of Madness
  "Latest of the problems presented for solution by psychologists interested in the mental peculiarities
  of mobs and crowds as distinguished from individuals is created by what is well called the craze over
  cross-word puzzles... All ages, both sexes, highbrows and lowbrows, at all times and in all places,
  even in restaurants and in subways, pore over the diagrams... [A] sinful waste in the utterly futile
  finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex.
  This is not a game at all, and it hardly can be called a sport... [solvers] get nothing out of it
  except a primitive form of mental exercise, and success or failure in any given attempt
  is equally irrelevant to mental development." NYT p. 18; 11/17/1924
• Ban Cross-Word Puzzles at [Univ. of] Michigan Portsmouth (OH) Daily Times, p. 1; 12/4/1924
• Crossword Mania Breaks Up Homes
  Neglected Cleveland Wives Said to Plan Divorces from Stricken Husbands;
  A manager of one legal-aid association claimed to have received an average of
  "ten letters a day from wives who have to remain at home these evenings just
  because their husbands are suffering from 'crossword puzzleitis.'" NYT p. 8; 12/11/1924
• Cross-Word Puzzles: Offices, Hospitals, Insomnia Sunday Star (Wash. DC); Gravure section; 12/21/1924
• Crossword Puzzle Causes Hectic Night Modesto (CA) Bee, p. 6; 12/16/1924
• Cross-Word Puzzle Craze Held Beneficial by Editors Sunday Star (Wash. DC), p. 6; 12/18/1924
• Cross-Word Headache Booms Optical Trade
  New Strain on Eyes Reveals Defects in Vision, as Did the Early Motion Pictures; NYT p. 20; 12/22/1924
• Cross-Word Puzzles: an Enslaved America
  "[The crossword] has grown from the pastime of a few ingenious idlers into a national institution:
  a menace because it is making devastating inroads on the working hours of every rank of society...
  [people were seen] cudgeling their brains for a four-letter word meaning 'molten rock' or a
  six-letter word meaning 'idler,' or what not: in trains and trams, or omnibuses, in subways,
  in private offices and counting-rooms, in factories and homes, and even -- although as yet rarely
  -- with hymnals for camouflage, in church... Pernicious puzzles have been known to break up homes.
  The solution of one concerned policeman was to enforce on addicts a ration of 3 puzzles a day,
  with 10 days' imprisonment if a 4th was attempted... Five million man-hours were being lost every
  day as workers forgot their duty to contribute to the gross national product, lost in the pure
  pleasure of finding synonyms." London Times (12/9/1924) and Tamworth Herald (12/27/1924)
• Decreased demand: library "Crossword puzzles and the radio have been given as the reason for a marked
  decline during the recent months in the demand for books at the Ottawa Public Library" Reuters; 1924
• Decreased demand: movies The picture theatres are also complaining that cross-words keep people at home.
  They get immersed in a problem and forget all about Gloria Swanson, Lilian Gish, and the other stars of the
  film constellation; Nottingham Evening Post
• Cross-Word Puzzles Clog the Wheels of Justice NYT p. 27; 1/6/1925
• Cross-Word Puzzles Causes More Trouble (assault); Marion (IL) Evening Post, p. 1; 1/7/1925
• Crossword Puzzle Cause of Trouble (late to meeting); Huntsville (AL) Times, p. 5; 1/11/1925
• Queen Mary, wife of King George V of England, Cross-Word Puzzle Fan Boston Globe; 1/12/1925
• Crossword Puzzles Steal Memory of Excessive Addict Sacramento (CA) Star, p. 1; 1/28/1925
• Sees Harm, Not Education "Fortunately, the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial
  or harmful is dying out fast and in a few months it will be forgotten." NYT p. 20; 3/10/1925
• The Cross-Word Puzzle Fad NYT p. 18; 3/16/1925
• Cross-Worditis Gets Official Attention from Health Bureau Tampa (FL) Times, p. 7; 3/11/1925
• Crossword Murder Man, Crazed by Them, Slays Wife and Wounds Self; Cincinnati (OH) Post, p. 15; 12/18/1925
• The cross-word puzzle mania is becoming more hectic even than craze for 'put and take'
  Nottingham Evening Post; 1925
• The damage caused to dictionaries in the library: Wimbledon, Willesden 1925
• Dulwich Library starts blacking out crosswords' white squares "with a heavy pencil,
  to prevent any one person from keeping a newspaper for more than a reasonable length of time"
• Competition One of the most marked characteristics of this present century is the competition fever,
  which holds a big proportion of the population under its allurement. The root of the whole problem
  can be found in mankind's instinctive desire "to get something for nothing." It is not surprising, therefore,
  to find that many ingenious devices have been used to attract the attention of the public in this respect,
  and the latest method is known as the cross-word puzzle; Western Times
• Competition "This week us 'ad a bit of talk about those yer crossword puzzles as they calls 'm.
  I duunaw that I knaws rightly what they is, 'cause seems to me they'm mostly for the bettermost people
  what got time to spare... I got a [daughter] only her don't ask me no questions. Her's fiddling about
  most all the week about what don't seem to be no use to nobody. Her send in to the competitions [but]
  her never won nothing yet, and I don't s'pose her's ever likely to." Western Times: Village Philosophy column
• Wild Hyacinth "This loss to productive activity of far more time than is lost by labor strikes.
  The cross-word puzzle threatens to be the wild hyacinth of American industry."

• 
  

  Is It the Cause? Crossword Puzzles Blamed headmasters decry the "laziest occupation" and an "unsociable habit"

• Ban on Cross-Words libraries limit access to dictionaries within reading rooms
• In Abuse of the Cross-Word Puzzle
• Crosswords "For Nerves" one British wife took her husband to court for staying in bed until 11 am doing crosswords
• Zoo keepers "Correspondents [are] unabashed over requests for aid in solving 'cross-word' puzzles,
  and the Zoo at least will be relieved when a new hobby takes the place of the current one.
  What is a word three letters meaning a female swan? What is a female kangaroo, or a fragile
  creature in six letters ending in TO?" Nottingham Evening Post
• Theater Mr. Matheson Lang missed his entrance in the Inquisition scene through becoming absorbed in a puzzle.
  This caused him much chagrin, for he is extremely conscientious as regards his stage work. All the "Wandering Jew"
  company at the New Theatre are, like their chief, interested in cross-word puzzles
• Grocery A girl asked a busy grocer to name the different brands of flour he kept. When he had done so,
  expecting a sale, she said she didn't want to buy any. She just thought one of the names might fit into a cross-word puzzle
  she was doing. The cross-word craze has been described as a disease. For which the scientific name might be "cluemonia."

• 
  

  Huntley and Palmers: "Cross-word" Cream Biscuit
  Eating our own words is a familiar phrase. Eating cross-words is a new pastime, but a pleasant
  one since Messrs. Huntley and Palmers, Ltd. have put on the market their "Cross-word" Cream
  Biscuit, so named because of its design. Simultaneously with arrival of the new biscuit Messrs.
  Huntley and Palmers have inaugurated a cross-word competition in which prizes are offered
  to the extent of £1,000

• A time before Wordle: Newspapers used to hate word puzzles 2/2022
• "By 1927, a wide-spread neurosis began to be evident, faintly signalled, like a
  nervous beating of the feet, by the popularity of cross-word puzzles."
  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
• "The cross-word puzzle, it would seem, has gone the way of all fads."
  ~NYT: 12/29/1929, p.27; "All About the Insidious Game of Anagrams"

1921

• Margaret (Petherbridge) Farrar's "career in crossword puzzles began at the New York World in 1921.
  She had been hired as the secretary to the editor of the Sunday edition of the New York World;
  he eventually assigned her to assist crossword inventor Arthur Wynne, who was overloaded
  with reader submissions of puzzles -- and with complaints about flawed puzzles.
  Petherbridge had never solved a puzzle herself and therefore chose puzzles to be printed
  without testing them, until fellow World employee Franklin Pierce Adams criticized her for it;
  in response, she tried the puzzles, and discovered to her dismay that some of them were unsolvable.
  She subsequently described her reaction as '(taking) an oath to edit the crosswords to the essence
  of perfection;' her puzzles eventually became more popular than Wynne's."
  (spoiler alerts: 1924:Simon&Schuster; 1941: 1st NYT editor)
• Colonel H.W. Hill publishes the first "Quickway" Crossword Dictionary.

1922

• Pearson's [1st UK magazine w/ crossword]
• Morning Oregonian and other newspapers published a comic strip by Clare Briggs
  entitled "Movie of a Man Doing the Cross-Word Puzzle"; with an enthusiast muttering
  "87 across 'Northern Sea Bird'!!??!?!!? Hm-m-m starts with an 'M', second letter is 'U'...
  I'll look up all the words starting with an 'M-U...' mus-musi-mur-murd--Hot Dog! Here 'tis! Murre!"

1923

• Margaret Petherbridge revises the cluing system for crosswords, sorting them into
  “Horizontal” and “Vertical” clues by number. (It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that
  the more familiar “Across” and “Down” terminology became the norm.)

1924

• Simon & Schuster found a company to publish The Cross Word Puzzle Book
  which came with a pencil and eraser; now, 258+ vols. According to legend, a young Columbia Univ. graduate
  named Richard L. Simon went to dinner at his Aunt Wixie's house. A NY World subscriber and a cross-word devotee,
  she asked where she could buy a book of crossword puzzles for her daughter. Simon, who was trying to break into the
  publishing business with college chum M. Lincoln Schuster, told her there was no such book -- and then hit on the idea
  of publishing one himself. The next day, he and Schuster went to the World's offices and made a deal with the paper's
  crossword puzzle editors. They would pick the newspaper's best crossword puzzles and pay $25 apiece for the rights
  to publish them in a book. To avoid the risk of beginning their corporate existence with a flop, they brought out the
  book under an alias -- the Plaza Publishing Company (named after their telephone exchange).
• "This odd-looking book with a pencil attached to it"
• The first run of 3,600 copies (@ $1.35) sold out quickly and the company ran
  additional printings (@ $0.15). The book eventually sold more than 100,000 copies,
  perhaps spurred on by groups like the Amateur Cross Word Puzzle League of
  America, itself a creation of marketing-savvy Simon & Schuster.
• Wikipedia: Simon&Schuster: History
• Margaret Farrar compiled two crossword puzzle books a year for
  Simon & Schuster; she was working on the 134th volume upon her death.
• "The cross word solver becomes a collector, a connoisseur of words. They lose, to him, their mundane purpose of a
  suitable medium for the exchange of thoughts, and take on an esoteric significance, akin to the appeal of slip-ware to
  the collector of pottery or the three-cornered Mauritius to the philatelist. He and Hamlet are one. 'Words, words, words'
  -- except that he has the advantage of the melancholy one. Hamlet's words ran in decorous file, one after the other;
  the solver's twine and interwine, each leading to others, resulting in a harmonious whole unapproached by any except
  the masterpieces of classic literature." ~F. Gregory Hartswick, introduction to the first edition of Cross Word Puzzle Book

• 
  

  The (first) Cross Word Puzzle Book -- now public domain!
  pages: Project Gutenberg online, EPUB, Kindle;
  puzzles: Crosserville: 50 puzzles: .puz, .pdf, web

• Cross-word puzzle blues (song) (audio; 2:37)
• I've Got the Crossword Puzzle Blues (song)
  by D. J. Michaud and Marguerite A. Bruce;
  performed by jazz clarinettist Bob Fuller;
  "I'm feeling awfully down, and cross.
  I spend all day solving, but I still don't have a clue"

• 
  

  Crossword Mamma You Puzzle Me (But Papa's Gonna Figure You Out)
  Papalia & His Orchestra; (song) (audio: 2:32);
  Will Shortz on NPR On the Media: Life Squared (interview; excerpts; 4:07-4:40; 9:20-12:54), 4/6/2006;
  MayasMix @ 13:24; YouTube 2:41; lyrics:
  "You treat me like an orphan in a storm / Crossword books won't keep my tootsies warm.
  Crossword Mamma, you puzzle me / But Papa's gonna figure you out.
  Washington, he crossed the Delaware / Columbus crossed the ocean blue
  If there's any more crossing to be done / Papa's gonna double-cross you..."

• Vladimir Nabokov "thought in crosswords", publishing the first Russian puzzle in Berlin
• Daily Express [1st UK newspaper w/ crossword]
• I tried the Chronicle's first crossword puzzle from 1924. It went poorly SF; 12/24/2023
• New York Herald-Tribune publishes first daily crossword?
• Todd Gross on New York Herald-Tribune Crosswords 12/13/2013
• NYT publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger is said to have loved crosswords
  almost as much as he hated having to buy copies of the rival New York Herald-Tribune
  in order to get them (since NYT wouldn't publish any)
• "The fans they chew their pencils
  The fans they beat their wives
  They look up words for extinct birds
  They lead such puzzling lives" ~Gelett Burgess, author of the “Purple Cow”
• Amateur Cross Word Puzzle League of America began the
  process of standardizing the appearance of crosswords as
  as early as 1924, instituting rules such as “all over interlock,”
  which meant that no part of the grid could be completely
  cut off by the black squares; only one-sixth of the squares
  could be black; and the grid design had to be symmetrical
  (rotational symmetry). Other changes, like outlawing
  two-letter words, came later.
  Why are crossword puzzles symmetrical?
• Ruth Franc Von Phul won the New York Herald-Tribune's
  National All Comers Cross Word Puzzle Tournament
  at the age of 20; obituary NYT; 4/1/1986
• Crossword Champ: Ruth von Phul NYT; 5/1/2020
• The Crossword Puzzle: Where'd The Women Go? 8/21/2013

1925

• "Young people who want to increase their vocabulary should not deceive
  themselves with crosswords. Let them read Shakespeare." ~Arthur Brisbane
• Puzzles of 1925 (musical revue); opens 2/2/1925;
  crossword sanitarium scene: solvers who had lost their minds.
  "Since Ma's Gone Crazy Over Cross Word Puzzles" (lyrics):
  "The house has gone to ruin / Since all that Mother's doin' /
  Is putting letters in the little squares /
  We live on canned tomatoes / And old cold boiled potatoes
  No wonder when he comes home / Father swears"

• 
  

  100-year old Ambrose Hines solving a puzzle in 1925 [on right]

• Forgotten book offers clues to the puzzling history of the crossword
  The Cross Word Puzzle Book, publishers Hodder and Stoughton;
  "This is not a toy! It is just possible you may pick up this
  book thinking of it as a present for the younger children.
  Will you please do us one favour -- in the name of humanity?
  Refrain, in a word. Think twice. Keep the book from younger hands,
  as cross words are not for tender minds"; 10/22/2021
• That Guiltiest Feeling cartoon; Clare Briggs; cross word craze, covering earth

• 
  

  A Punch cartoon about "The Cross-Word Mania" [on right]

• cryptic crossword invented.
  "There is something about the British mind-set... that won't leave anything straightforward.
  British humor is twisted, and so are the nation's crossword puzzles.
  
  When the crossword became a craze in the United States in 1925-25,
  it immediately crossed the Atlantic and took hold in English publications, where
  very soon the puzzle makers started using clues with anagrams and other wordplay.
  
  The literary critic Edward Powys-Mathers is credited with inventing the
  so-called cryptic crossword, creating puzzles under the pseudonym Torquemada
  (the first grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition). Torquemada set puzzles
  for The Saturday Westminster beginning in 1925 and for The Observer
  beginning in 1925 until his death in 1939. Typically Torquemada's clues
  were not dictionary definitions. Each clue was a distinct word puzzle in itself.
  Mathers felt that this cluing innovation made the puzzle more difficult
  and therefore more entertaining.
  
  Derrick Somerset Machutt, working under the pseudonym Ximenes
  (the name of another grand inquisitor), took over as setter for
  The Observer after Torquemada's death. He and other British puzzle
  makers were instrumental in shaping the rigorous rules of cryptic
  cluing that became standard over the succeeding decades.
  
  In the United States, cryptic crosswords have been a weekly staple of
  The Nation magazine since 1943. The Broadway composer
  Stephen Sondheim created a notable series of weekly cryptics for
  New York magazine in 1968 and 1969. Another Broadway composer,
  Richard Maitby, Jr., has created a monthly cryptic for Harper's since 1976.
  
  Today cryptic crosswords are popular among elite solvers throughout the
  English-speaking world. Curiously, other languages don't lend themselves so
  much to cryptic cluing, so this style of crossword is almost unheard-of elsewhere."
  ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 6, A Brief History of Cryptic Puzzles; 12/17/2017
• Have a go at the very first Sunday (UK) Times crossword [1/11/1925] Times; 3/27/2022
• Cross-Words (Between Sweetie and Me) by Little Ramblers; (song; 3:48);
  "Sorrow has torn at my heart strings / I wonder who is to blame
  My sweetie never has time for me / She's deep in love with a game
  Crosswords have made me blue as can be, / Cross, crosswords between my sweetie and me,
  She's been puzzling, don't seem to care / Whether I'm near her or taking the air
  I'm jealous. How can I win sympathy? I'm hoping she'll soon need L-O-V-E.
  Every night in our little home / We sit together, but I'm all alone.
  She's so contrary / Her old dictionary and crosswords are sweeter than me."
• even more songs: Cross word papa you sure' do puzzle me; by Josie Miles;
  Cross-word puzzle of love; Cross words; Crosspuzz;
  Crossword (The) puzzle glide; Do you do cross-word puzzles;
  I'm a cross word puzzle fan; My cross-word puzzle girl;
  They're doing cross word puzzles now; Your cross-words are making me blue

• 
  

  Alice Solves the Puzzle animated short Disney film; features "Bootleg Pete"
  (later Peg Leg Pete) a bear-like creature who collected crossword puzzles
  and tries to steal a rare and valuable one from Alice. [on right]

• Felix All Puzzled Felix the Cat cartoon; video: 2:39; 1/15/1925
  Felix is hungry, but his owner won’t feed him until he finishes his crossword puzzle.
  And he’s fixated on the clue that will complete the puzzle,
  “Vertical. Found chiefly in Russia.”

• 
  

  Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip “Red Magic":
  adventures of a mild-mannered cruciverbalist: Cross Word Cal.
  One strip features a frustrated cabbie idling for passengers
  when a pedestrian tells him to get a "checkered cab".
  Cal dives into a stack of newspapers, cuts out the crossword
  from each one, and spackles them to his car.

• 
  

  Puzzled by Crosswords (movie; comedy)

• The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will
  (story; Lord Peter Wimsey) by Dorothy L. Sayers
• Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 2: Lord Peter Wimsey Guardian; 8/23/2012
• The Evening World: heart-shaped, advertising content
• "Helen Keller did Braille crosswords and recommended them to the blind."
• The Long Green Gaze: A Cross Word Puzzle Mystery Vincent Fuller, 1925
• First Estonian language crossword puzzle published 99 years ago with prizes, on 2/9/1925; 2/15/2024
• NYT advertisement: "Strictly a Newspaper -- Without Comics. Without Puzzles"

1926

• The Truth About George by P. G. Wodehouse
  Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 9: PG Wodehouse's The Truth About George [Guardian; 8/23/2012];
  Plumtopia: The world of P.G. Wodehouse: The Truth About George;
  George Mulliner: "Will you be my wife, married woman, matron, spouse, help-meet,
  consort, partner or better half ?”;
  Susan Blake: "Oh, George! Yes, yea, ay, aye ! Decidedly, unquestionably, indubitably
  incontrovertibly, and past all dispute!";
  And never a cross word [homage to PG Wodehouse: Jeeves and the Leap of Faith by Ben Schott; TheTimes];
  other Wodehouse crossword stories: 1937: Summer Moonshine;
  1938: The Code of the Woosters: Madeline Bassett looks at Bertie Wooster "like someone
  who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a shrewd ‘emu’ in the top right-hand corner";
  1957: Something Fishy: Lord Uffenham, a bumbling aristocrat, demanded answers
  from his butler sotto voce so that,
  should a visitor happen to enter, he could appear to be dashing off the puzzle with ostentatious ease.
  1963: Ice in the Bedroom: Freddie Widgeon is overcome by "the feeling he had sometimes had
  when trying to solve a Times crossword puzzle, that his reason was tottering on its throne";
  1966: Sticky Wicket at Blandings; 1971: Much Obliged, Jeeves;
  1989: The Wench is Dead: Morse frustrated by a single remaining clue on the train from Oxford to London,
  ‘quickly wrote in a couple of bogus letters (in case any of his fellow passengers were waiting to be impressed)’.
• A Budapest man committed suicide, leaving a note in crossword puzzle form:
  "The solution will give you the exact reasons for my suicide and also the names of the people interested."
  No one could solve it.
• Crossword suicide, latest update 4/1/2013
• Budapest crossword suicide, revealed! (mostly) 2/20/2013
• Budapest crossword suicide? 10/30/2009
• Crossword, Crossword narikin 2 films ; Japan

1929

• Mildred Jaklon spearheaded a crossword-puzzle contest for the Chicago Tribune,
  with a $5,000 prize; the contest proved so popular that the paper instituted
  a regular daily puzzle, with Jaklon as its editor
• "The Curse of Eve" by Flora Annie Steel is about two antiheroines
  who are "making a living out of the craze for crossword puzzles."

References

• The Roaring 20s crossword; NYT Learning Network
• Saucy "Crosswords" Postcards by Donald McGill in 1920s
• Roaring Twenties: Fads The Charleston; 1st Miss America Pageant; Flagpole Sitting; Mah-Jongg;
  Crossword Puzzle Book-of-the-Month Club; Time; Reader's Digest
• Wikipedia: 1920s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 3: 1920s
  R.U.R. (robots); IBM 80-Column Punch Card; Amphibious Warfare; Art Deco; Babe Ruth; Tri-motor Airplane; Polygraph;
  Leica I and the 35mm Standard; Scopes Monkey Trial; McKinsey and Co.; Traffic Light; Mickey Mouse; Wired; 11/2/2012
• Paleofuture: 1920s
• Popular fads from the year you were born: 1920-2020
• 11 Influential Inventions from the 1920s That You Should Definitely Know About 7/17/2019

---

Highlights | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1934 | 1935 | 1937 | 1938 | 1939 | References

---

Highlights

• 1930: The Times (UK) -- the "Thunderer" mentioned in letter to NYT editor [on right]
• "Together with The Times of London, yours [NYT] is...
  the only journal of prominence that has never succumbed to the lure of the cross-word puzzle.
  The craze -- the fad -- stage has passed, but there are still people numbering into the millions
  who look for their daily cross-word puzzle as regularly as for the weather predictions."
  ~NYT: 2/4/1930, p.20; "The Lure of the Puzzle"
• 1931: Dell Crossword Puzzle Magazine
• 1934: Acrostics
• 1938: Scrabble; Bletchley Park
• 1939: Frank Lewis
• "By the late 1930s, the crossword puzzle boom... had begun to fizzle --
  largely because the crossword puzzles in most newspapers had become predictable,
  repeating boring clues like 'Headgear' (HAT), 'Writing instrument' (PEN), 'Woody plant' (TREE).
  But readers of The New York Times never got bored with their crossword puzzle --
  because the Times didn't have one." ~BUJBR

1930

• the term "crossword" first appeared in a dictionary
• The Times Crossword at 90 -- cracking fun for the clued-up The Times; 2/1/2020
• A brief history of The Times crossword see our very first crossword, explore the history of the cryptic
  and get to know our longest-serving crossword compiler; The Times; 3/9/2014
• First Times Crossword UK; 1/20/2011

1931

• Dell (Crossword Puzzle) Magazine; longest running crossword magazine

1932

• Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers
  "classic whodunnit with a crosswordy code" [Guardian]
• Dictionary Wrecked Word Contests and Cross-word Puzzles Blamed at Library;
  Evening Star (Wash. DC), A-3; 12/19/1932

1934

• "Acrostic puzzles, also known as 'Double-Crostics', were the invention of... Elizabeth S. Kingsley,
  a Wellesley graduate (class of 1898). Kingsley enjoyed crosswords, but they left her unsatisfied.
  'When you were done,' she said, 'all you had was a filled-in grid. What was the purpose?'
  So she invented the Double-Crostic, whose solution would leave the reader with an
  interesting thought or a worthwhile passage from literature.
  
  In March 1934, Kingsley walked in the offices of The Saturday Review of Literature
  and left a portfolio of 100 original acrostic puzzles, which impressed the editors.
  Within a few weeks they were appearing weekly. Simon & Schuster started
  publishing books of Kingsley's puzzles in 1935, and The New York Times Magazine
  introduced them on its puzzle page in 1943.
  
  Because Double-Crostic was a trademarked term (now lapsed), other publisher
  had to devise alternative names when they published their versions of the puzzle:
  Anacrostic, Quote Acrostic, Twin-Crostic, Double Cross, etc. This is why the
  same puzzle form has so many different names in different publications.
  
  Besides Kingsley, only four people have made Acrostics for the Times:
  Doris Nash Wortman (1953-67), Thomas Middleton (1967-99) and
  Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon (1999 to date), who work as a team."
  ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 4, Brief History of Acrostic Puzzles, 12/17/2017
• Crossword Mystery (Bobby Owen Mysteries #3) E.R. Punshon; 1934
• A 1934 murder mystery’s pages were printed out of order. Now the world is obsessed.
  only four people have ever solved the puzzle contained in the pages of 'Cain’s Jawbone.'
  TikTok helped turn the obscure, 100-page British novel into a craze; WaPo; 12/26/2022

1935

• Competition judges have to decide whether skill is involved or whether, as a lawyer for the police argues at Bow Street,
  "the words are ridiculously easy, and a child of 12 should have no difficulty in solving them"; 1935
• Word-Nerd Nation: The surprising history of The Stanford Daily's crossword 2/23/2023

1937

• The Great Rebus Craze of 1937 (Plus 4 Rebuses to Solve Yourself) MF; 12/28/2021

1938

• Criss-Crosswords => Lexiko => "Scrabble"
  created by architect named Alfred Mosher Butts
• "Bletchley Park asked its cryptologists to... solve a Daily Telegraph
  in under 12 minutes as part of its recruitment process."
  ~15 Fascinating Facts About Crosswords: #8
• Wikipedia: Bletchley Park; cryptanalysis
• Bletchley Park: Home of the CodeBreakers Google Cultural Institute; slideshow
• Cryptography: U.S. Cyber Command Valentines Day 2021 Cryptography Challenge Puzzles; .pdf
• Can You Solve a UK Intelligence Agency's Christmas Puzzle? GCHQ ; Giz; 12/10/2015
• Turing's Spirit Hovers at a Restored Estate
  Bletchley Park, where the Real 'Imitation Game' Happened; NYT; 11/28/2014
• At Bletchley Park, a Reminder About the History of Cracking Codes NYT; 8/9/2014
• Happy birthday, Crossword: a very efficient aptitude test 12/6/2013

1939

• World War II: 1939-1945; Frank Lewis US Army code breaking; later NSA
• Code Girls: The Untold Story of the Women Cryptographers Who Fought WWII
  at the Intersection of Language and Mathematics interviewer had only two questions to ask her:
  "Did she like crossword puzzles, and was she engaged to be married?"; 12/11/2017
• The Women Who Helped America Crack Axis Codes review of Code Girls;NYT; 11/6/2017
• NSA Uses Twitter Puzzle To Recruit Computer Hackers 5/16/2014
• Can You Crack the NSA's Top-Secret Crossword Puzzles?
  the National Security Agency Just Released Archive Editions of its In-House Magazine, Cryptolog; PopSci; 3/28/2013
• Frank Lewis, US Codecracker, Ingenious Puzzle Designer Wired; 12/2/2010
• NSA's Puzzle Periodical: 2015-; NSA Cryptochallenge: Puzzle of the Week
• The CryptoKids Arrive at NSA.GOV! Codes & Ciphers; Games & Activities
• The Winter Murder Case. A Philo Vance Story Van Dine, S. S.; "A detective story is a grim business,
  and the reader goes to it, not for literary furbelows and style and beautiful descriptions and the projection
  of moods, but for mental stimulation and intellectual activity -- just as he goes to a ball game or to
  a cross-word puzzle? Dissertations on etymology and orthography interspersed in the definitions of a
  cross-word puzzle would tend only to irritate the solver bent on making the words interlock correctly."

References

• Wikipedia: 1930s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 4: 1930s
  Radar; Works Progress Administration; Schrödinger's Cat; Pop Culture Characters; Ballpoint Pen;
  Nylon; Z1 computer by Zuse; Kodachrome; Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias; War of the Worlds;
  Electric Pinball; Volkswagen Beetle; Wired; 11/9/2012
• Paleofuture: 1930s
• A Look at the 13 Most Influential and Interesting Inventions from the 1930s 7/13/2019

---

Highlights | 1941 | 1942 | 1944 | 1945 | 1946 | 1948 | References

---

Highlights

• Crosswords were banned in Paris during the Second World War,... for fear
  of being misused. In fact, some editors were pulled up by the authorities
  when there happened weird coincidences such as these. Two days prior
  before an escape from the Wormwood Scrubs prison by a famous spy,
  a crossword had included the name of the road outside the prison.
• 1942: NYT (finally!)
• 1944: D-Day -- and Crosswords
• 1945: movie: Brief Encounter

1941

• "We ought to proceed with the puzzle, especially... in view of the fact
  that it is possible that there will now be bleak blackout hours
  -- or if not that, then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind.
  We ought not to try to do anything essentially different from what is now being done --
  except to do it better." ~Lester Markel, NYT ed. (< 2 weeks after Pearl Harbor)

1942

• The Daily Telegraph ran a misleading ad, offering to donate 100 British pounds to the Minesweeping Fund
  if, under controlled conditions, anyone could solve their crossword puzzle in less than 12 minutes.
  In fact, the ad was a ploy to recruit intelligence agents to work on enemy ciphers at Bletchley Park.
• President Franklin Roosevelt's pragmatic 'green light letter'; 1/15/1942 stated that public recreation
  (specifically baseball) supported the war effort rather than distracting from it, and therefore should be preserved.
  "The inclusion of the puzzle in the Times would therefore not be considered a trivial notion during a time
  of national peril, but instead a way to help relieve tension among the war-minded public"
  ~All the Clues That Are Fit to Solve: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Popular & American Culture Association; 6/2019

• 
  

  "The Herald Tribune runs the best puzzle page in existence so far,
  but... they have gotten into a bit of a rut.
  Their big puzzle never ventures even one imaginative definition,
  and lacks the quality that I believe can be achieved and maintained.
  We could, I dare to predict, get the edge on them. I don't think
  I have to sell you on the increased demand for this kind of pastime
  in an increasingly worried world. You can't think of your troubles while solving a crossword."
  ~Margaret Petherbridge Farrar (Simon&Schuster crossword editor -- soon, 1st NYT crossword editor)

• Margaret Farrar: 1st NYT crossword editor, 1942-1968; "1st Lady of Crosswords" bio
• Few Gnus: The Woman Behind the Crossword-Puzzle Craze
  Margaret Farrar is probably the most important person in the world of the crossword puzzle; New Yorker; 6/13/1959
• "Under Margaret Farrar's direction,... the crossword 'constructors'
  (freelance puzzle makers) developed a clever and elaborate style.
  Instead of giving clues like 'Stinging insect' (BEE) and 'Bird's home' (NEST),
  they phrased them as 'Nectar inspector' and 'Nutcracker's suite.
  The Times' clever, whimsical style almost single-handedly ushered in a
  crossword renaissance, as newspapers all over the U.S. followed its lead." ~BUJBR
• NYT inaugurates a puzzle page; NYT; 2/15/1942;
  "There will be two puzzles each Sunday [daily not introduced until 1950]
  -- one with a flavor of current events and general information, and one varied in theme, ranging
  from puzzles in a lighter vein, like today's smaller one, to diagramless puzzles of a general nature.
  Readers are invited to contribute their puzzles. Payment will be made for each puzzle accepted.
  The pattern of the larger puzzles should be 23 by 23 squares; the smaller 15 by 15"
• 15 x 15: Riddle Me This .puz;
  23 x 23: Headlines and Footnotes .puz; a few example clues:
  1-Across: Famous one-eyed general (WAVELL) Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell of Britain, whose victory
  against Italy at the Battle of Sidi Barrani in Egypt in 1940 "shattered the illusion of Axis invincibility";
  117-Down: Nazi submarine base in Belgium (OSTEND);
  54-Down: Reluctant allies of Germany (FINNS);
  49-Down: Prime necessity for war production (SPEED)
  43-Down: Strait between Nova Scotia and New Breton (CANSO)
  Cape Breton, an error and the first crossword ever printed in the New York Times
• Birth of the Crossword
  the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ushered the US into WW II and the NYT Crossword into print; NYT; 12/17/2022
• The legacy of the crossword puzzle in times of crisis NPR; 3/24/2020
• Sunday NYT crossword later becomes popular stereotype of 'most difficult' puzzle
  -- even though NYT Fri & Sat are harder; Sun is like a hard Wed or easy Thu NYT
• The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Still Stumps After 80 Years history; HSW; 12/19/2018
• The Quick 10: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle trivia about NYT crossword; 8/20/2009
• History of the NYT Crossword: Wikipedia; Barry Haldiman
• The New York Times Celebrates 75 Years of Crosswords a brief history;
  1913: The World's First Crossword Puzzle Sparks a Craze; 'The granddaddy of crossword puzzles';
  1924: The New York Times Refuses to Join in the Fun; 'The utterly futile finding of words';
  1941: Bombing of Pearl Harbor Leads to Changed Minds; 'We ought to proceed with the puzzle';
  1942: Margaret Farrar and the First New York Times Crossword; 'Profession and passion';
  1950: The Daily Crossword Begins;
  1969: Will Weng Becomes Second Crossword Editor; 'Good company on lazy Sunday mornings';
  1977: Eugene T. Maleska, the Third Crossword Editor; 'Exactitude with puckishness';
  1978: First American Crossword Puzzle Tournament;
  1993: Will Shortz Becomes Fourth Editor of the Crossword; 'A tradition of culture and quality';
  1996: First New York Times Crossword on the Web; 'Less blood, fewer erasures';
  1998: First (and Only) Marriage Proposal in the Crossword -- Although we still get requests;
  2006: Crossword Documentary 'Wordplay' Opens; 'Crowd-pleasing entertainment and suspense';
  2008: The Wordplay Crossword Blog Begins; 'The Simpsons' Meet the Puzzle Master;
  2016: The Puzzle Mania Section Is Published; the largest New York Times Crossword: 50x50; NYT; 2/14/2017
• "Egotism, n:... Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen." ~Anonymous, ?
  (incorrectly attributed to Ambrose Bierce -- who died ~1914, also before "crossword" coined in ~1930)
• "Men in their forties are like the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle:...
  tricky, complicated, and you're never really sure you got the right answer."
  ~Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City

1944

• Wikipedia: D-Day Daily Telegraph crossword security alarm
  Dieppe; Gold; Sword; Juno; Utah; Omaha; Overlord; Mulberry; Neptune
  Crossword puzzles in World War II
• Physics teacher and crossword constructor Leonard Dawe is questioned by authorities...
  after several words -- Omaha (codename for one of Normandy's beaches),
  Utah (another Normandy beach codename),
  Overlord (the name for the plan to land at Normandy on June 6th),
  mulberry (nickname for a portable harbor built for D-Day), and
  Neptune (name for the naval portion of the invasion)
  -- appeared in London's Daily Telegraph crosswords during the month preceding
  the D-Day landing. This has been attributed to either an incredible coincidence,
  or Dawe somehow overhearing these words (possibly slipped by soldiers involved)
  and incorporating them into puzzles unwittingly.
• The D-Day clues were there, if only Hitler had done the Telegraph crossword
  When short of inspiration Dawe used to ask his pupils for words to be used as solutions.
  The boys, habitually playing games with the American soldiers stationed nearby, had picked up
  some of the strange words used by the loose-lipped troops; Tel; 6/5/2019
• That Time When Winston Churchill Panicked Over a Crossword Puzzle 12/12/2018
• The D-Day Crosswords in which a British newspaper mysteriously spends June 1944
  printing top-secret World War II spoilers; Omnibus: Entry 318.PR2019; 8/7/2018
• The Crossword Puzzles That Jeopardized D-Day 2/5/2018
• Spies, Crosswords, and Secret Messages! 9/16/2021
• Untold Stories of D-Day 6/2002

1945

• Brief Encounter (movie);
  Wikipedia; Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 10: Brief Encounter; Guardian; 5/10/2012
  Fred Jesson: Come and sit by the fire in the library and relax. You may help me with the Times crossword.
  Laura Jesson: You have the most peculiar ideas of relaxation.
  Fred Jesson: [playing the crossword puzzle] You're a poetry addict. See if you can help me over this.
  It's Keats. 'When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face / Huge cloudy symbols of a high _______.'
  Something that's seven letters.
  Laura Jesson: Romance, I think. I'm almost sure it is. 'Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.'
  It will be in the Oxford Book of English Verse.
  Fred Jesson: No, it's right I'm sure. It fits in with 'delirium' and 'Baluchistan'.

1946

• What do I think of the Secretary of Commerce? HAW!
  crossword puzzles these days are making subtle editorial comments by having
  the initials of congressmen spell out words describing these individuals.
  For example, the initials of the Senator from Ohio spell the word "rat." (Robert A. Taft); 8/17/1946

1948

• The Crossword Puzzle Mystery (radio show), (April - May 1948) (13 parts); The Adventures of Superman
  e.g., Lois Lane has told cub reporter Jimmy Olsen to look in the Daily Planet from the day before yesterday
  for the crossword puzzle in search of clues in case she hasn't been heard from within twenty-four hours.
  
  Meanwhile, Lois is on an airplane trying to solve a crossword in order to learn where she must go.
  She finds, thanks to the clues, that she must be in a town called Moundville.
  
  Not long afterwards, Clark does the crossword puzzle in which Lois had done.
  Mayor Perry White, who has left Kent in charge of the newspaper, thinks that the mild mannered
  reporter has gone mad. Clark proves him wrong and finds that he must go to Moundville as Superman.
  
  Withers later learns that the head of syndicate in Metropolis that distributes crossword puzzles to
  newspapers like the Daily Planet is also the mastermind behind the gold heists. ~review

References

• Wikipedia: 1940s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 5: 1940s
  Manhattan Project; George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four; Polaroid Camera; Computer Bug;
  First Videogame; Guided Missile; House Committee on Un-American Activities; Materials Rationing;
  Helicopter; Microwave; Jackie Robinson; Start of Silicon Valley; Wired; 11/15/2012
• Paleofuture: 1940s
• 11 Inventions from the 1940s That Still Shape Our World Today 7/23/2019

---

Highlights | 1950 | 1951 | 1952 | 1954 | References

---

Highlights

• 1950: Daily NYT
• 1954: Princess Margaret

1950

• NYT begins publishing daily crosswords (9/11/1950) [.puz], [.pdf]
• "The capitulation of the N.Y. Times to the daily crossword puzzle is...
  an event for which we have been able to figure out no logical motivation,
  unless it is that the Times was embarrassed at sharing solely with the
  Daily Worker, among the local papers, the distinction of not having such
  a frivolous feature. The Times has had puzzles on Sunday, of course.
  We have often wondered what sort of people editors believe solvers
  of their daily crosswords to be, aside from commuters. The two papers,
  that, with the Times are most favored by commuters have always had
  set spots for their puzzles, the World Telegram and Sun on a comics page
  and the Herald Tribune either beneath its comics or beneath notices
  of auction sales -- implicit evidence of a feeling on the part of their
  editors that puzzles appeal in the main to people who are childlike
  or have special interests in buying used tiaras or tugboats."
  ~New Yorker comment, 9/30/1950
  (spoiler alert: New Yorker finally capitulates in 2018 and publishes crosswords)

1951

• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey book;
  "Well, I suppose it is no use suggesting jig-saws to someone in your position.
  How about cross-words. I could get you a book of them, if you like."
  "God forbid."
  "You could invent them, of course. I have heard that is more fun than solving them."
  "Perhaps. But a dictionary weighs several pounds.
  Besides, I always did hate looking up something in a reference book."

1952

• Crossword Quiz (Canadian TV game show)
• Scrabble History; In the early 1950s, as legend has it,...
  the president of Macy's discovered the game on vacation and ordered some for his store.
  Within a year, everyone 'had to have one' to the point that Scrabble games
  were being rationed to stores around the country. In 1952, the Brunots
  realized they could no longer make the games fast enough to meet the growing interest.
  They licensed Long Island-based Selchow & Righter Company, a well-known game manufacturer
  founded in 1867, to market and distribute the games in the United States and Canada.

1954

• "Princess Margaret of England... won a crossword contest in Country Life magazine.
  At first the editors thought the entry was a hoax. A call to Buckingham Palace, though,
  confirmed that the princess had indeed submitted the solution." ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p.11, 12/17/2017
• "A minister in the India Parliament introduced a bill to... ban crossword competitions
  He declared before a cheering house: 'This menace has come to the forefront
  and has assumed really appalling proportions.'" ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p.11, 12/17/2017

References

• The 1950s crossword; NYT Learning Network
• Wikipedia: 1950s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 6: 1950s
  Transistorized Computer; Sci-Fi Cinema, Rock&Roll; Spy Satellites; Hockey Mask; Hovercraft; Digital Photograph;
  Tennis for Two (videogame); DNA; Black Box; Fidel Castro; Catalyzed Plastics; ICEE Machine; Wired; 11/22/2012
• Paleofuture: 1950s
• 11 Interesting Inventions from the 1950s That Still Affect Our Lives Today 7/24/2019

---

Highlights | 1965 | 1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | References

---

Highlights

• 1965: Reading-Work-Pieces by artist Arthur Köpcke resembles crossword; 2016: defaced (filled-in)
• 1969: Margaret Farrar (1st NYT crossword ed.) retires, succeeded by Will Weng;
  ARPAnet (precursor to Internet); Apollo moon landing

1965

• Reading-Work-Pieces nos. 32-32 + 124, Arthur Köpcke
• 51 years later...
• Art-Defacing Crossword Solver Now Says
  She Owns the Copyright to the New Piece MF; 8/3/2016
• Woman fills in crossword at museum only to discover
  it is a $89,000 artwork 7/16/2016
• Nuremberg museum horrified after woman fills in artwork
  resembling crossword puzzle A 91-year-old woman has found
  herself in trouble with a German museum after writing on an exhibit.
  Part of the avant-garde artwork was meant to look like an
  empty crossword puzzle; 7/14/2016

1966

• Crossword (TV game show); An unsold pilot for a game show, basically a crossword puzzle
  played by two teams of two, the game itself is on a large board. Each game has a title denoting the theme
  that the words will lead to. A player chooses a spot on the puzzle board, something like "ten across",
  or Twenty-two down" and then must guess the word from the clues supplied by the emcee.

1967

• "The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose."
  ~Vladimir Nabokov likened writing a novel to creating a crossword in Paris Review interview
• The Clue in the Crossword Cipher (mystery) by Carolyn Keene; Nancy Drew Mystery Stories v44

1968

• Lyricist Stephen Sondheim begins creating cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine,
  helping introduce Americans to British-style crosswords.
• Beryl Reid Says Good Evening TV series;
  Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords Guardian; 9/20/2012; The Crossword Sketch video: 6:15;
  Reid as an uncouth train passenger irritates bowler-hatted commuters
  by sitting in their first-class carriage and interfering with their solving.

1969

• Margaret Farrar: Wikipedia 1st NYT crossword editor -- retires
• Few Gnus: The Woman Behind the Crossword-Puzzle Craze
  Farrar: "[p]robably the most important person in the world of the crossword puzzle."
  Her preferences for clues: "We don’t allow two-letter words and we avoid as much as
  possible obsolete words, variants, obscure words, and clichés—words like 'gnu' and 'emu'
  and 'proa' ... I favor using lots of book titles, play titles, names in the news, and so on.
  I also favor puzzles with a unifying theme ; New Yorker; 6/13/1959
• Margaret Farrar, Times Editor of Crossword Puzzles, Retires;
  Held Position Since '42 When Feature First Appeared NYT; 1/5/1969
• Margaret Farrar, 87, Editor Of Crossword Puzzles, Dies obit; NYT; 6/12/1984
• A Crossword Hall-of-Famer: Margaret Farrar by Helene Hovanec;
  .pdf; CROSSW RD Magazine; Nov/Dec 1992
• "Perhaps Margaret Farrar's greatest legacy is the large number of expert puzzlemakers
  she discovered and/or nurtured over the years – Will Weng, Eugene T. Maleska,
  Frances Hansen, Anne Fox, A.J. Santora, Diana R. Sessions, Jules Arensberg,
  Herbert Ettenson, Harold T. Bers, Mel Taub … the list goes on. Other editors have left
  their mark on the world of crosswords…, but it was Margaret Farrar, more than anyone else,
  who established the American crossword rules and format, and whose smooth, sensible,
  timeless style of editing I still try to emulate today." ~Will Shortz; 2006
• A Life In The Arts -- The Life Of Margaret Petherbridge Farrar innovations, rules; Electricka

• 
  

  Will Weng: 2nd NYT crossword editor, 1969-1977;
  "His greatest innovation for The Times crossword was humor," says Shortz.
  "He was genuinely a funny man and his sense of humor came through in the puzzles." [obit.], NYT

• Apollo 11 moon landing 7/24/1969
• ARPAnet first 2 "internet" hosts: UCLA & SRI (Stanford Research Inst.); 10/29/1969

References

• The 1960s crossword; NYT Learning Network
• Wikipedia: 1960s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 7: 1960s
  2001: A Space Odyssey; venture capital (Rock and Davis); Compact Disc; Muhammad Ali; Spacewar (videogame);
  Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos"; Nuclear Powered Carrier; Sketchpad (drawing program);
  Psychedelic Research; Concorde; Kennedy Assassination; Saigon Execution Photo; Wired; 12/06/2012
• Paleofuture: 1960s
• 9 Influential Inventions That Got Their Start in the 1960s 7/29/2019

---

Highlights | 1970 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | References

---

Highlights

• 1972: Crossword Puzzle (song; from Dana)
• 1975: Last Bus to Woodstock (first Inspector Morse novel)
• 1976: Starting Here, Starting Now (musical): Crossword Puzzle (song)
• 1977: Will Weng (NYT ed. #2) retires, succeeded by Eugene Maleska
• 1978: American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT) started by Will Shortz

1970

• One Across, Two Down (novel) by Ruth Rendell;
  "There are only two things that interest Stanley: the crosswords and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money"
• Where Have All Our Heroes Gones (song) by Bill Anderson, album Where Have All Our Heroes Gone;
  lyrics: "And sometimes when it rained you'd sit beside me / And we'd race raindrops down the window pane
  You'd bring me coffee and we'd work crossword puzzles together / We don't do anything together now"
• Crossword (song) (video; 2:18) by Jeff Cooper and the Stoned Wings, album Purple Haze / Tribute to Jimi Hendrix

1972

• Crossword Puzzle (song) by Dana (BBC Top of the Pops) from album All Kinds of Everything;
  MayasMix @ 18:35; lyrics: "Isn't life a little bit like a crossword puzzle? Giving you lots of trouble /
  I'm scratching my head to find the clues
  In the black and white that make up yesterday's news / And my crossword puzzle is keeping me in a muddle"

1973

• Crossword Puzzle (album) by Partridge Family (just title, cover; no puzzle songs)
• The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis novel;
  Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 7: Lionel Asbo; Lionel Asbo character added later
  in 12 crossword novels; Guardian; 6/14/2012
  Charles Highway: "Sipping on my coffee I tackled the Mirror crossword.
  If I completed it, I would **** Rachel within... three weeks"

1974

• Revisiting the brilliance of "McGear":
  Paul McCartney's brother Mike's 1974 solo album
  McGear sparkles with the younger McCartney's hilarious sense of wordplay
  and musical eccentricity; "My dad used to do the crossword," McCartney recalled,
  "and he had a great love of words and puns, which is very Liverpool. My family
  and people in Liverpool were into surrealism before the surrealists," he joked.
  "While we may have been Liverpool working-class people, we had a natural
  love of wordplay, along with our Liverpudlian sense of humor, and my dad
  would stimulate it at home with the crosswords, which he shared with me
  and 'our kid'," Mike's warmhearted euphemism for his world-famous brother.
  Salon; 7/28/2019

1975

• Last Bus to Woodstock (mystery) by Colin Dexter; "Inspector Morse, the irascible detective
  whose penchants for cryptic crosswords, English literature, cask ale and Wagner reflects
  Dexter's own enthusiasms."; Inspector Morse and DS Lewis after were named
  after two Ximenean crossword prize-winners: the former chairman of Lloyds Bank,
  Sir Jeremy Morse and Mrs DW Lewis;
  "In the same way he's fascinated by crosswords, the puzzle of solving the murder is
  what drives him on." ~John Thaw (Morse protrayer)
  "Thaw was the definitive Morse. Grumpy, crossword-fixated, drunk, slightly misogynistic, pedantic about grammar."
  ~No one else should play Inspector Morse, says his creator Colin Dexter; Guardian; 3/25/2014
• Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 3: Inspector Morse Guardian; 8/9/2012
• Curtain novel by Agatha Christie;
  Ironically, Captain Hastings had unwittingly intervened in Mrs. Franklin's plan to poison her husband,
  by turning a revolving bookcase table while seeking a book to solve a crossword clue (Othello again),
  thus swapping the cups of coffee, so Mrs Franklin poisoned herself.
• Crossword Puzzle (song) (video; 2:54) by Sly Stone, album High on You; MayasMix @ 72:14
  lyrics: "There's a puzzle in my head / Spend a lifetime finding pieces / It will take forever to put together"
• The Cross-Wits (TV game show; 1975-1980)

1976

• Crossword Puzzle (song) (video; 4:51) from musical Starting Here, Starting Now; MayasMix @ 43:25;
  lyrics: "I am sitting here doing the Sunday Times Crossword Puzzle. Somehow the words won't come.
  I am staring at squares but my eyes never focus, and my mind's feeling strangely numb. It's a fact that a word...";
  synopsis: "A woman holding a NY Times's reveals that ever since her Hecky left her, she has been unable to
  focus on the crossword puzzle. As she tries to answer some clues, she is continually distracted by thoughts of him.
  Slowly, it is understood that the reason Hecky left her was because, being the intelligent woman that
  she is, when they did the crossword together, she always got all of the answers before him.
  This led to much frustration and arguing and eventually Hecky couldn't handle it anymore.
  As she stumbles through each clue, she becomes more upset and less in control of her emotions."
• The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin by David Nobbs fiction;
  Top 10 crosswords in fiction -- Honourable mention: The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin; Guardian; 6/28/2012;
  Reggie tends to tackle the crossword on the morning train, still stuck as it arrives at Waterloo while his carriage
  companion Peter Cartwright says "Finished" by Raynes Park.
• Letters to a Young Puzzler between Margaret Farrar (1st NYT editor, then 79) to Will Shortz
  (24 years old, future 4th NYT editor); NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 4, 12/18/2016
• "An air crash occurred over Zagreb, Croatia, possibly because of... a crossword.
  A British pilot, who may have been distracted by solving a puzzle,
  wrongly flew into restricted airspace and hit another plane." ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p.11, 12/17/2017
• Spiral Puzzles. "Early in his career, the crossword editor Will Shortz found inspiration...
  in the puzzles magazines of Italy, which are known for their innovations in word puzzling.
  In Piccola Enigmistica (which loosely translates as Little Puzzledom,
  a reference to the magazine's diminutive size), he was entranced by one called
  La Doppia Rotazione (The Double Rotation). Although Shortz couldn't read Italian,
  he was mesmerized by the swirly grid and the idea that every letter appeared
  in exactly two answers, once inward and once outword.
  
  Shortz created his first Spiral, in English, for the January 1976 issue of
  Classic Crossword Puzzles magazine. Later he made Spirals for (Pencil Puzzles & Word) Games,
  where he was an editor from 1978 to 1993, and then for The Times.
  
  Before online tools were available, Shortz used rare books that list words spelled backward
  to create the puzzles. Now anyone has access to the same digital resources he does.
  These days, he reports, his biggest challenge is not repeating words from past Spirals.
  'It would be easy to get into a rut and reuse an elegant combination of interlocking words.
  Most words don't lend themselves for use in Spirals, and if they do work,
  often they force things I've used before. I'm always searching for fresh combinations.'"
  ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 2, Brief History of the Spiral Puzzle, 12/17/2017

1977

• Will Weng's Farewell Puzzle transcription; NYT; 2/27/1977
• Eugene Maleska: 3rd NYT crossword editor, 1977-1993
  "I'd say the wordplay in the crossword themes became more varied and sophisticated under Maleska
  — it became more a word game than in previous years. But Maleska was a staid guy —
  he had been a school superintendent in the Bronx, he loved opera and classical music and
  his puzzles had a more serious tone than Will Weng's." ~Will Shortz
• M*A*S*H: 38 Across TV series; Season 5; 1/11/1977
  Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords; Guardian; 9/20/2012;
  After being stumped yet again by a crossword puzzle, Hawkeye calls in his friend Tippy Brooks,
  who is adept at crosswords, to provide the needed answer.
• Crosswords (song) (video; 3:29) by Split Enz, album Dizrythmia; MayasMix @ 38:46; lyrics:
  "I'm down, you're across / I can't seem to solve this puzzle / I turn while you toss / Crosswords puzzle me"

1978

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT site) started by Will Shortz
• Try/time yourself on 8 tournament puzzles! 2006: free; 2008-2018: $20/year;
  Java (< 2017), JavaScript (2018-) required; only Win/Mac currently
• Puzzle Lovers Find Their Tribe at a Crossword Tournament NYT; 3/26/2018
• A Million Little Boxes Dan Feyer; 538; 4/17/2015
• Humans of ACPT Shortz; Feyer; contestants; NYT; 4/4/2015
• ACPT 2014: On Your Marks, Get Set -- Wait! First, There's Work To Do
  how puzzles are selected for the tournament; back to Stamford from Brooklyn; NYT; 3/7/2014
• "The marketing manager of Stamford, Connecticut's newly built Marriott Hotel was exploring ways
  to bring in business during a slow winter weekend. He decided to tap into the crossword-solving community
  and was introduced to Will Shortz by Norton Rhoades, a crossword constructor. Will had recently moved to Stamford
  and was ready to take on the challenge. He organized the first American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at the hotel,
  and now, 45 years later,still directs and hosts it for hundreds of crossword-solvers across the world." ~NYT, 4/1/2022
• WordPlay movie, released in 2006, about ACPT 2005

1979

• "The puzzle with the Japanese name (Sudoku) that millions of people love to solve
  did not, in fact, originate in Japan....
  
  It was invented by an American, Howard Garns, an architect in Indianapolis,
  and first appeared in the May 1979 issue of Dell 'Pencil Puzzles & Word Games'
  magazine. It was called 'Number Place' and appeared as an occasional feature.
  
  In the early 1980s, Nobuhiko Kanamoto, the editor in chief of the Japanese puzzle
  publisher Nikoli, was visiting the United States. He picked up a copy of
  'Pencil Puzzles & Word Games', and while he couldn't solve any of the word
  puzzles, he loved Number Place. He took it back to Japan and, after fine-turning it,
  introduced it in his magazines under the name 'Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru,'
  or the 'numbers must be single.' This was later shortened to 'sudoku'.
  
  In 1997 a retired, puzzle-loving judge from New Zealand, Wayne Gould, visited Japan.
  He became entranced with Sudoku, and created a computer program for generating
  the puzzles. 'The Times of London' bought Sudoku from him in November 2004.
  That publication immediately set off a craze in Britain, which then came back
  full circle to the United States as well as spreading around the world.
  
  Howard Garns, unfortunately, died in 1989, so he did not live to see his invention
  become a global phenomenon." ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 4, Brief History of Sudoku, 12/17/2017
• The Puzzlemaster's Dilemma Will Shortz's crosswords are about to make him a word-nerd movie star.
  But Sudoku is making him rich; NYM; 6/19/2006
• Crossword (song) by Jethro Tull, album Stormwatch (iTunes; 3:38); MayasMix @ 00:00;
  lyrics: "Life is a clue in your crossword...Your life is a clue in the crossword."

References

• Wikipedia: 1970s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 8: 1970s
  Apple II; Weapons-Grade Lasers; Pentagon Papers; Title IX; Computer Printers; Altair; Atari; Modern Sci-Fi ETs;
  Anti-Lock Braking System; Color Fine-Art Photography; Fractals; Nixon's nuclear "Project Independence"; Wired; 12/13/2012
• Paleofuture: 1970s
• 9 Inventions That You Probably Didn't Know Came from the 1970s 7/28/2019

---

Highlights | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1987 | 1989 | References

---

Highlights

• 1981: Crossword Magic (software)
• 1982: A is for Alibi (book; by Sue Grafton)
• 1984: Crossword Puzzle (song; by Barbara Mandrell)
• 1987: Inspector Morse (TV series)

1980

• MIT Mystery Hunt (puzzlehunt)

1981

• Cardiac Arrest (song) (video; 2:54) (wikipedia) by Madness, album 7;
  lyrics: "Ten more minutes till he gets there / The crossword's nearly done. / It's been so hard these days /
  Not nearly so much fun / Think of seven letters / Begin and end in 'C' / Like a big American car / But misspelt with a 'D'."
• Crossword Magic for Atari 800 and Apple II
  Crossword puzzle maker. Choose subject, words, and clues; program automatically connects words.
  Play on-screen or make printout. L&S Computerware manual
• Top 10 crosswords in media, no 6: Madness's Cardiac Arrest Guardian; 6/28/2012

1982

• 'A' is for Alibi (novel; first in 'alphabet mysteries' series) by Sue Grafton;
  her books appear in short crossword clues, e.g., 'Sue Grafton's "___ for Lawless"' (3);
  "My landlord, Henry Pitts, is a former commercial baker who makes a living now, at the age of eighty-one,
  by devising obnoxiously difficult crossword puzzles, which he likes to try out on me."
  ~Kinsey Millhone, fictional private investigator
• United States Open crossword puzzle-solving tournament directed by Will Shortz, 1982-1986
• the world's "largest crossword" by Robert Turcot.
  for even larger, later puzzles, see course section Terminology&Types: Size
• Chapter and Verse (song) (video; 3:42) by Utopia (Todd Rundgren), album Utopia;
  lyrics: "I got the dictionary in my hand / But I can't seem to find the word I'm looking for
  I've checked every letter, now I'm up to Z / There just ain't anymore / I've got a million choices in my head"

1983

• The Crossword Mystery (TV episode) in Mister T (series)
• (Can I) Find the Right Words (To Say) (song) (video; 3:08) by Blondie, album The Hunter; MayasMix @ 59:44
  lyrics: "The right words are so hard to say. It's a challenger puzzle from the magazine section Across with the questions."

1984

• Crossword Puzzle (song) (video; 3:38) by Barbara Mandrell, album Clean Cut; MayasMix @ 32:33;
  lyrics & .mp3: "What we've become is 1 Across, and also rhymes with rules /
  Two Down is what we tell that's opposite the truth / Three Across is what we do to each other's feelings /
  Four Across begins with 'A', and means disagreeing."
• A Six-Letter Word for Death Patricia Moyes; 1984

1985

• The Golden Girls TV series; 1985-1992
  Substitute teacher Dorothy (Bea Arthur) is often seen working on a crossword puzzle,
  which is an activity her roommates and mother do not find enjoyable.
  Rose: Oh Dorothy, what crossword puzzle are you doing?
  Dorothy: Sunday, New York Times... IN INK. [S6E20: Even Grandmas Get the Blues]
• All That Is New Yorker poem: "a ghostly grille / Through which, as often, we begin to see /
  The confluence of the Oka and the Aare"; 5/13/1985
• Train Of Thought (song) (video; 4:22) by A-ha, album Hunting High and Low; MayasMix @ 26:39;
  lyrics: "He likes to have the morning paper's Crossword solved;
  Words go up words come down; Forwards backwards twisted round"

1987

• Inspector Morse TV series; "Morse has a very cryptic mind, he loves doing crosswords;
  we came up with the obvious idea -- his name is Morse and we use Morse code in the music"
  ~Barrington Pheloung (theme composer) obituary
• Tin Men movie; His unutterably unhappy wife (Nora) does crosswords, waiting until 3 AM for
  Tilley to come home, obtuse and uncomprehending of her need for escape and fulfillment.

1989

• "Split Decisions was invented... in the 1980s by an elementary-school teacher, George Bredehorn,
  of East Meadow, N.Y. It was originally called 'Set-Letter Crossword' and debuted in
  'Pencil Puzzles & Word' Games in January 1989. There, the puzzle's name was changed to
  'Split Decisions', by which it has been known every since.
  
  The puzzle maker and editor Fred Piscop, originally from Bellmore, N.Y., was Bredehorn's
  student in elementary school, where Bredehorn often presented original puzzles in class.
  Piscop's love of puzzling was sparked in part by his teacher. The two maintained a lifelong
  friendship. Before Bredehorn died in 2012, he asked Piscop to continue creating the
  Split Decisions puzzles that currently appear in 'The Times'."
  ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 2, A Brief History of Split Decisions, 12/17/2017

References

• Wikipedia: 1980s
• The Decades That Invented the Future Part 9: 1980s
  Space Shuttle Columbia; IBM PC; Macintosh; MTV; Miracle on Ice; Leveraged Buyout; Nintendo NES;
  Sandra Day O'Conner; Stealth; Additive Manufacturing (early 3D printing); In-Car Stereos; Autofocus; Wired; 12/21/2012
• Paleofuture: 1980s
• 7 Influential Inventions from the 1980s That Would Go on to Change the World 7/28/2019

---

Highlights | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | References

---

Highlights

• 1990: World Wide Web (proposed)
• 1993: Eugene Maleska succeeded (briefly) by Mel Taub, and finally by Will Shortz (4th NYT crossword editor)
• 1996: Election ('quantum') Crossword; Across Lite format

1990

• World Wide Web proposed
• Crossword Concerto (song) by Robert Wells, album Rhapsody in Rock II
• Landscape Painted With Tea (book) by Milorad Pavic;
  "A failed architect's search for his father, an officer who vanished in Greece during World War II,
  becomes a labyrinthine puzzle, inextricably bound to the history of the ancient monastery on
  Mt Athos". It's organized as a crossword puzzle: "Readers may approach the book chronologically by reading
  only the 'Across' sections, or less chronologically and with more digressions by reading the 'Down' sections.
  Either strategy gradually reveals the story of a soul-searching architect who roams a labyrinth of meditation and memory."
  "In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text"
• More Than Words (song) (video; 4:17) (wikipedia) by Extreme, album Pornograffitti;
  lyrics: "How easy it would be to show me how you feel; More than words is all you have to do to make it real"

1991

• Nothing Turned Out Right (song) by Demon, album Hold On To The Dream;
  lyrics: "So I walked in the sunshine / And suddenly it started to rain / So I reached for the crossword /
  But couldn't find where I'd left my brain / It's just one of those days / When nothing turns out right"

1992

• Bambi Is a Stag and Tubas Don't Go 'Pah-Pah': The Ins and Outs of Across and Down
  NYT (Sun) Crossword 50th Anniversary; 2/16/1992
• "The former president Bill Clinton... is an avid crossword solver.
  Sometimes he does as many as three puzzles a day.
  While being interviewed for a magazine in 1992,
  he completed a medium-level crossword in 6:54." ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p.11, 12/17/2017
• Happy Phantom (song) (video; 4:17) by Tori Amos, album Little Earthquakes;
  lyrics: "They say Confucius does his crossword with a pen / I'm still the angel to a girl who hates to sin"

1993

• Behind the Times: Who will succeed Maleska? CROSSW RD Magazine; .pdf; January/February 1991
• Will Weng, 86, Crossword Editor For 10 years for New York Times obit; 2nd NYT ed.; NYT; 5/3/1993
• Eugene T. Maleska, Crossword Editor, Dies at 77 obit; 3rd NYT ed.; 8/5/1993
• The Times Names A New Puzzle Editor
  Mel Taub was interim editor for 2-1/2 months between Maleska and Shortz; NYT; 10/11/1993
• Will Shortz: 4th NYT crossword editor, 1993-present; 1: Farrar; 2: Weng; 3: Maleska
• A Life In The Arts: The Life Of Will Shortz Electricka
• New York Times Crossword Editors names, # of puzzles by each; XWI
• Will Shortz's Life in Crosswords
  his favorite clues, debates in the crossword community, and unexpectedly finding his first serious romance; NYkr; 2/15/2023
• One Foot In The Grave: The Trial [S4E5] TV series;
  Victor is home alone while on call for jury service, tackles a crossword and contemplates his various ailments.
  Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords; Guardian; 9/20/2012
• Crossword Compiler software for creating crosswords: shareware on DOS;
  commercial later on Windows 3.1
• How to solve crosswords origins of Crossword Compiler; 4/16/2006

1994

• The New York Times Crossword Companion Roll-a-Puzzle System from Herbko International
• Crazy Crosswords (Australia) (TV game show; 1994-1996)
• Twelve Across Barbara Delinsky; 1994
• Jigsaw (song) (video; 4:09) by Love Spit Love, album Love Spit Love;
  lyrics: "i've got to get this crossword done / of everything you've said / all the one way conversations
  words that i forget / and it would be so easy to see / if i could be there now"

1995

• Oliver's Travels TV; PBS; Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 4: Oliver's Travels; Guardian; 7/26/2012
  "When Oliver (Alan Bates) ... is laid off by his university, he resolves to visit Aristotle, a famous compiler of crosswords.
  When Oliver discovers that Aristotle's home has been ransacked and Aristotle is nowhere to be found, ...";
• Crossword Blues (song) (video; 6:11; lyrics: 4:10-) by Rob Tognoni, album Stones and Colours;
  MayasMix @ 89:50; lyrics: "lately I've been learnin' to do the crossword everyday /
  it's just one of those things I'm gonna need to while my lonely hours away"
• The Tunnel novel by William H. Gass;
  Billy Kohler, the protagonist, describes his mother’s crossword habit with sanctimonious disgust as a waste of time,
  yet when she enters a hospital at the end of the novel, he tries to understand her by doing the puzzle. A crossword grid
  appears on the side of one of the pages, which visually as well as thematically blurs the novel and the crossword together.
• The American President movie; Wikipedia;
  (President SHEPHERD (Michael Douglas) finishing up a crossword puzzle)
  SYDNEY: Do you ever get used to helicopters dropping you off at your front door?
  SHEPHERD: How many "e"s in "kaleidoscope"?
  SYDNEY: I guess you do.

1996

• Election Day Puzzle: The clue to the middle answer across the grid was
  "Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper." The answer appeared to be CLINTON ELECTED.
  Because of intentional ambiguity in the crossing clues, however, the answer could also have been
  BOB DOLE ELECTED. Either answer fitted. For example, the crossing clue Black Halloween animal
  could have been either BAT or CAT, with the C for CLINTON or the B the start of BOB DOLE.
  "It was the most amazing crossword I've ever seen. As soon as it appeared, my telephone started ringing.
  Most people said 'How dare you presume that Clinton will win!' And the people who filled in BOB DOLE
  thought we'd made a whopper of a mistake!" ~Will Shortz; xwordinfo: the puzzle;
  Wikipedia: a quantum (or Schrödinger) crossword simultaneously has 2 states
• NYT adopts Across Lite (AL) application & .puz format
• (8/10/2021: NYT Games No Longer Available on Across Lite no more support for .puz format; 8/2/2021)

1997

• Friends: The One With The Dirty Girl [S4E6] TV series;
  Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords; Guardian; 9/20/2012;
  Rachel's attempt in to surreptitiously elicit answers from Chandler after insisting that
  she really wants "to finish a whole one without any help"
• Crossword Weaver: software program for creating crossword puzzles.
• Success of firm's crossword software is no puzzle Variety Games; 2/17/1998
• Getting the lard out: The koshering of the Oreo cookie original recipe called for pig lard; 2/26/2008

1998

• USPS issues commemorative crossword stamp
• Mercury Rising (movie); "An autistic 9-year-old boy cracks the U.S. government's top-secret code
  when an unapproved test matrix gets published in a crossword magazine."

1999

• West Wing (Pilot) TV series;
  LEO (President's Chief of Staff): Margaret. Please call the editor of the New York Times crossword
  and tell him that Khaddafi is spelled with an h, and two d's, and isn't a seven letter word for anything.
  LEO: [on the phone] 17 across. Yes, 17 across is wrong... You're spelling his name wrong... What's my name?
  My name doesn't matter. I am just an ordinary citizen who relies on the Times crossword for stimulation.
  And I'm telling you that I met the man twice. And I recommended a pre-emptive Exocet missile strike
  against his air force, so I think I know how.
  LEO: [looking at the phone, then hanging up] They hang up on me every time."
  The West Wing's Leo McGarry on the Correct Way to Spell 'Qaddafi' video: 0:53; Atlantic; 8/24/2011
  
  from Season 3 (2001)
  JED: "Laissez-faire doctrine," fifteen letters.
  ABBEY: Social Darwinism.
  JED: No, that's not the answer, see, because social Darwinism isn't a doctrine.
  It's a force of nature. The answer is libertarianism.
  ABBEY: I'm going to be ready in two minutes.
  JED: Take your time.
  ABBEY: Passive aggression is not going to get me out the door any faster.
  JED: Booboo, I gave up on getting you out the door in the late seventies. Plus, it's your birthday.
  You're old, and you don't move around that fast.
  ABBEY: Libertarianism has fourteen letters, not fifteen.
  JED: I know, so I'm shading in the extra box.
  Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 8: The West Wing; Guardian; 6/7/2012
• A Clue for the Puzzle Lady (mystery, 1st in Puzzle Lady series) by Parnell Hall;
  synopsis: "Amateur sleuth Miss Cora Felton, an eccentric, nationally-syndicated crossword puzzle columnist
  whose craving for trouble has increased with age. When the body of an unknown teenager carrying a cryptic,
  crossword-like message is found in the local cemetery". Other books: Last Puzzle and Testament, Puzzled To Death, ...
• The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project: Bring Old New York Times Crosswords into the Digital Age
  Litz-ing NYT puzzles: 1942-1994; solve those puzzles
• Kill the Man (movie);
  "Guy: What are you doing in my parking lot?
  Bob Stein: Murder.
  Stanley Simon: Yeah, handsome guy too.
  Guy: The corpse just moved!
  Stanley: They tend to do that sometimes. I once saw a man finish a crossword puzzle after being shot five times.
  Bob: Sunday edition too."
• The Crossword Murder (mystery) by Nero Blanc from Crossword Mysteries (series)
• Nobody Knows Anybody (Nadie Conoce a Nadie) (movie);
  "Simon (Eduardo Noriega), a crossword-puzzle writer, receives a cryptic message threatening him
  with death if certain words don't appear in his puzzles."
• Your Dictionary (song) (video; 3:30) by XTC, album Apple Venus Volume 1;
  lyrics: "H-A-T-E -- is that how you spell love in your dictionary...There are no words for me inside your dictionary"
• The Story of Us (movie); Ms. Pfeiffer's character designs crossword puzzles.
  Mr. Willis goes from skepticism that anyone can make a living at such an activity to examining,
  later in his marriage, his wife's puzzles for insights into their relationship and its decidedly
  murky prospects; he starts to see her crosswords as secret messages. Wikipedia; NYT

References

• Wikipedia: 1990s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 10: 1990s
  Sony Playstation; GPS-Guided Munitions; Linux; MP3 Player; RQ-1 Predator Drone; Oklahoma City Bombing;
  Photoshop; The Internet (web); Dark Energy; Women's Soccer; Web Design; venture capitalist (John Doerr); Wired; 1/25/2013
• Paleofuture: 1990s

---

Highlights | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | References

---

Highlights

• 2002: CrozzWord (Steve's Zaurus app)
• 2006: Wordplay (movie)
• 2007: iPhone
• 2008: Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words (Simpson's episode)
• 2009: Lviv crossword spans entire side of a residential building
  Crossword Puzzle with Lady in Black Coat by Paulina Olowska

2000

• Monday: Now ... and Then NYT (daily) Crossword 50th Anniv. [.puz, .pdf]
• All the Clues That Are Fit to Solve: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle
  The Journal of Popular and American Culture Association; 6/2019;
  Examples of public perception of the Times' status are not limited to storytelling and characterization.
  In his 2009 book Everything but the Coffee, Americanist Bryant Simon makes an
  important connection between Starbucks and the New York Times in terms of public perception
  as elite institutions. In looking to connect with what Simon calls "the right people,"
  Starbucks sought ways to brand themselves as the highbrow coffee shop. They sold USA Today
  to their customers for a few years, but because the paper had the perception of being "the McPaper,"
  Starbucks felt that by switching to the New York Times, the "educated class," who had money
  to spend on things like $4 coffees would associate Starbucks with the same ideals as the Times.
  The Times is seen as well-established and of the cultured, educated, middle and upper class,
  and therefore the puzzle is seen in the same light.
• Starbucks to stop selling newspapers: Bring your own NYT or WSJ
  Starbucks started selling NYT in 2000; 7/12/2019
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; 1.4 (TV series);
  Catherine: "You're right, you know. I should be just like you. Alone in my hermetically-sealed condo watching Discovery
  on the big screen, working genius-level crossword puzzles, but no relationships. No chance any will slop over into a case."
  Grissom: "Technically, it's a townhouse. And the crosswords are advanced, not genius. But you're right.
  I'm deficient in a lot of ways. But I never screw up one of my cases with personal stuff."

2002

• Steve's CrozzWord application debuts on Zaurus; CrozzWord awarded 1st place in the
  Entertainment/Educational/Multimedia category in the JPDA 2002 Application Developers Contest
  for Zaurus and iPaq sponsored by Insignia Solutions, HP, Intel, Metrowerks, Sharp,
  Softbank Publishing and Sun Microsystems
• Marathon (movie); "Each year, single New Yorker Gretchen (Sara Paul) tries to complete as many
  crossword puzzles as possible during a 24-hour marathon session while riding the subway.
  By performing this strange ritual (a legacy from her mother), Gretchen seems to be railing against
  the meaningless cacophany of city life. Though seemingly senseless, Gretchen's annual gesture
  speaks volumes about imposing personal order on the random dice throw that is daily life."
• A Star-Guarded Coronation (song) (video; 5:17) by Vintersorg, album Visions from the Spiral Generator;
  lyrics: "A star-guarded coronation / Over the crossword's profound and royal thrones"
• Happy at Last (song) (video; 2:49) by Josh Joplin, album The Future That Was; MayasMix @ 47:43
  lyrics: "I'm not as smart as a Sunday Times crossword puzzle / Big words get me into trouble"
• Hiccups (song) (video; 4:03) by Darren Hanlon, album Hiccups;
  lyrics: "Some day without trying you'll find something that's rare / Like an eight letter word on a triple word square
  A thousand ideas I try to tell crossword girl / How do I get one across when you're always too down?
  And if things get hard will you throw in the pen? / But if you are unsure you can pencil it in"

2003

• Four Down And Twelve Across (song; 2:47) by George Strait, album Honkytonkville; MayasMix @ 35:58;
  lyrics: "Girl, this relationship we're in / To say the least it's puzzling' / Like a crossword puzzle / Fill in the blanks /
  [Chorus] What's four down and twelve across / Two letter synonym for lost That's me / And a three letter word /
  That rhymes with through / Oh I get it, that's you"
• I Do My Crosswords in Pen (song) (video; 4:20) by On Broken Wings, album Some of Us May Never See the World;
  lyrics: "Ink bleeds deeper / When pressed hard / Soaks through paper and / Leaves stains on the table"
• Excalibur Touch-Screen Crossword Puzzle
  1000 NYT puzzles; Model 455 manual; [right: images]
• Corpus de Crossword: A Mystery With Crosswords Nero Wolfe, 2003

2004

• "'Ken' means 'wisdom' in Japanese,
  so the name 'KenKen' can be translated as... 'wisdom squared.'
  
  Tetsuya Miyamoto, a mathematics teacher in Yokohama, Japan, invented the puzzle in 2004
  as a way to improve his students' math and logic skills. His goal was to offer his classes a tool
  that would be understandable and fun and that would encourage independent thinking.
  He wanted his puzzle to be challenging for a student of any level and to build concentration and perseverance.
  
  In 2006, a Japanese television program featured Miyamoto's classroom as an example of
  innovative teaching methods, and the puzzle that had been a school assignment quickly
  became a favorite leisure activity for all ages in Japan.
  
  After the show aired, the Japanese educational publisher Gakken purchased the rights to the puzzles in Japan.
  It was first called 'Keisan Block', with the tagline 'Kashikokunaru Puzzuru', which means 'the make-you-smarter- puzzle.'
  
  Robert Fuhrer, founder and president of a United States game-development and
  marketing company, Nextoy, bought the rights to the puzzle outside Japan.
  
  In 2009 KenKen became the first daily puzzle besides the crossword to run in The New York Times.
  It now appears in approximately 200 newspapers nationwide, has a strong online following and is the basis
  of an annual international championship." ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 4, Brief History of KenKen; 12/17/2017
• The Smoking Room TV series; Barry is usually seen attempting to solve the day's crossword,
  and although he considers himself something of a crossword expert his answers are often ludicrous
  and Robin solves many of the (sometimes very easy) clues for him. Barry doesn't understand how
  Robin can be gay when he's so good at crosswords.
  videos: UFO 2:45; Bontempi 1:21; Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords; Guardian; 8/20/2012;
• Crossword Puzzle Blues (song) by Steve Mardon, album Critic's Darling;
  lyrics: "I try to get my point across but you keep bringin' me down / All you offer me is cryptic clues..
  You came here on a Sunday, dressed in black and white / I'm just another fool /
  Livin' with the crossword puzzle blues (break out the White Out) /
  Livin' with the crossword puzzle blues (where's my thesaurus)"
• Word Wars (movie) "In this character-driven documentary, filmmakers Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo
  follow four 'word nerds' through their fastidious preparations and smaller tournaments
  that lead to the national championship Scrabble tournament in San Diego in 2002.
  Our favorite contender: Joel Sherman, a true dork with acid reflux trouble (he constantly
  quaffs Maalox) and no other discernable job besides playing Scrabble."
• Walk Idiot Walk by The Hives
  the video takes place in a white room with crossword puzzle designs on the wall. Before the music starts,
  there's a sign with a large "!"; as he steps on the crossword designs, letters appear soon after, reading "Walk Idiot Walk"
• Sideways movie; early on, the hero, Miles (Paul Giamatti), does the Times crossword puzzle
  while driving his Saab on the San Diego Freeway
• These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach; book; renamed "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" in 2012;
  Norman delights in filling in the crosswords in ink so no one can erase his answers and start afresh.

2005

• Wordplay (song) (video; 3:08) (wikipedia) by Jason Mraz, album Mr. A-Z;
  lyrics: "I am the wizard of ooh's and ah's and fa-la-la's / Yeah the Mister A to Z / They say I'm all about the wordplay"
• Everyday (song) (video; 6:44) by Authority Zero, album Rhythm and Booze;
  lyrics: "These masses of confrontation beating me down / I'm picking at the pieces to put them all back into place
  A never ending crossword of questions collaborates / While asking myself, where are we going in time?"
• The Office TV series (American);
  Stanley Hudson generally prefers working on crossword puzzles during the various staff meetings.
  Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords; Guardian; 9/20/2012
• Crossword (song) by Helen Slater, album Crossword; MayasMix @ 05:35
• The Perfect Man movie; "What constitutes the perfect man according to this ill-conceived hokum
  is not someone with a burning inner soul, deep compassion or romance oozing from every pore.
  No, the clue that poor Jean's lifelong search for the ideal companion is finally over is based
  on the fact that the man in question fills in crosswords with pen."

2006

• WordPlay (movie): "WordPlay follows New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz,
  his fans and contributors, and champion solvers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament,
  exposing the madness and mirth behind this not-so-puzzling national obsession."
• Every Word (song) (video; 2:41) by Gary Louris (from WordPlay); MayasMix @ 94:08;
  "You know every word is made up of letters / Made up of letters / Made up of letters"
• Bananagrams (game)
• Simple Man (song) by John Corbett, album: John Corbett;
  lyrics: "Crossword's on the table, coffee in the cup / She finds another word for waiting as he pulls into the drive ? /
  And she's working on that crossword, fightin' back a smile / Find another word for sober, let him sit out there a while"
• Mozartian Crossword (classical) (video; 8:08) by Jill Teml; MayasMix @ 11:50
• Crossword (video; 3:41) by Karolina Novitska on the song "Don't Look Back" by télépopmusik;
  MayasMix @ 76:40; background
• Mr. Vinegar and the Crossword "It's a bright sunny day, and Mr. Vinegar steps out into the world
  to enjoy his morning coffee and do the crossword... but the world has other plans." video: 0:07
• Crossword (song) (video; 3:41) by Bleak; album Burns Inside;
  lyrics: "I couldn't solve her / God and our hearts cried / Together, as I let my air out /
  Like a crossword / Like a crossword / You are to me"

2007

• iPhone and mobile crossword apps
• (Merv Griffin's) Crosswords (TV game show): IMdb
• The Crossword Monologues (movie):
  "If people from different parts of the world lined up their monologues, as if in a crossword puzzle,
  these monologues would eventually create a conversation."
• Mariella (song) (video; 4:17) by Kate Nash, album Made of Bricks; MayasMix @ 85:30
  lyrics: "Yes, she always got the crossword puzzle right everyday / And she could do the alphabet backwards /
  Without making any mistakes"
• The Two Ronnies TV series; A Times-solving Barker is irritated by fellow commuter Corbett tackling the Sun;
  video: 'proper' crosswords video: 5:14;
  Crossword blog: the best TV gags about crosswords; Guardian; 9/20/2012
• No Reservations film;
  "In No Reservations, the leading lady is a crossword solver. Each day she sits with her colleagues at the lunch table,
  armed with a pen and crossword grid. While the others laugh and chat, she is immersed in the crossword
  with a glum expression. She is also unkempt, unfriendly, has no "life" and no boyfriend. She is in therapy.
  Along comes the hero. As it happens in such films, they spar then become friends. The lady grows
  cheerful and beautiful. After predictable twists, the movie moves towards the inevitable happy end.
  Once Love enters the lady's life, she is never again to be seen solving the crossword."
  ~Attention film-makers: Crossworders are not oddballs! 3/15/2010
• Crossword Puzzle (song) by Noro, album Love Sweet Dream; MayasMix @ 24:58

2008

• The Simpsons: "Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words" (TV episode):
  "Lisa discovers that she has a talent for solving crossword puzzles,
  and she enters a crossword tournament. Lisa's feelings are hurt
  when she discovers that Homer bet against her in the
  championship match... Crossword puzzle creators Merl Reagle
  and Will Shortz guest star as themselves...One of the few successful
  moments Gil Gunderson has enjoyed is when he won a crossword
  contest, but only because he fooled Lisa by making her take his glasses,
  which he didn't actually need."
• Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 1: The Simpsons Guardian; 10/4/2012
• CrossFire (crossword construction software) released
• Lollapuzzoola a crossword-solving tournament with a more tongue-in-cheek, free-form style,
  launches in Jackson Heights, New York
• Cross Words (movie): "On his 50th birthday, George, an arrogant, agoraphobic, crossword puzzle maker
  is mistaken for dead... and he must crash his own funeral to learn how to live."
• Burn Notice (TV series); "In the world of intelligence, if an operative hands you a crossword puzzle,
  chances are, you just received a coded message." ~Michael Westen
• Mon-Sun NYT Crosswords (songs; .mp3) by John Schnall;
  MayasMix @ Mo: 79:49; Tu: 79:54; We: 80:13; Th: 80:52; Fr: 81:54; Sa: 82:47; Su: 83:38

2009

• 10 Years of the KenKen Puzzle in The Times NYT; 2/9/2019
• Ukraine Building Gets A 100-Foot Crossword Puzzle That Solves Itself
  The city of Lviv/Lvov, Ukraine, creates a crossword that spans an entire side of a residential
  building, with clues scattered around the city's major landmarks and attractions; 7/31/2009
• Words with Friends from Zynga; Crosswords with Friends in 2017
• From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords
  captivating and in-depth exploration of the cultural history, psychology, and even metaphysics of
  crosswords -- their promise of a world without chaos and uncertainty; Dean Olsher
• Wordplay (TV game show)
• Academia (song) (video; 3:16) by Sia from the TV movie Acceptance; MayasMix @ 64:00
  lyrics: "You can be my alphabet...You're a cryptic crossword, a song I've never heard"
• All About Steve (movie); "In All About Steve, the heroine is a crossword compiler for the (fictional) paper
  Sacramento Herald. She is also socially inept, clingy and spouts random facts to anyone
  within hearing range. She gets so besotted with a man Steve (a CCN cameraman,
  whom she has barely met) that she writes her next crossword themed entirely on him,
  titled "All About Steve". The crossword when printed frustrates the readers.
  She is fired from her job for this crossword. Now unemployed, the lady stalks the man
  all across the country and gives him the creeps." ~Attention film-makers: Crossworders are not oddballs! 3/15/2010;
  Crossword blog: ...favourite crosswords in fiction? -- Dishonourable mention: All About Steve Guardian; 5/3/2012
• Little Bird (song) (video; 6:13) by Imogen Heap, album Ellipse; MayasMix @ 50:32
  lyrics: "... little bird, little bird / What do you hear?... Crossword puzzles start to grate / One across Four letter word"
• Supernatural TV series; In the Free to Be You and Me
  [S5E3], Sam is at a bar and completes the Saturday New York Times crossword, the most
  difficult puzzle of the week. A bartender who is romantically interested in Sam takes this
  as an indication of Sam's intelligence and continues her pursuit.
• Crossword Puzzle Crisis (TV); Robert must incorporate various food-related sayings into his dishes
  when he caters the awards luncheon at the 2009 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn
• crossword poem; Valzhyna Mort; 12/2009
• Crossword (song) (video; 2:38) by Deckchair Orange, album Deckchair Orange; MayasMix @ 21:53
• We Learned To Be Cool From You (song) (video; 6:50) by Jimmy Buffett, album Buffet Hotel;
  lyrics: "Maybe I can parlez a little Francais / Maybe I can even write a whole page a day
  Do a crossword puzzle in a minute or two / But I learned to be cool from you"

References

• Wikipedia: 2000s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 11: 2000s
  iPhone; Human Genome; Instagram; Rise of the Drones; Hadoop (search server software); Connected Cars; Sep. 11th;
  Nintendo Wii; Apple (design); Doping (sports); Facebook; Social Media; Wired; 2/1/2013
• Paleofuture: 2000s

---

Highlights | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | References

---

Highlights

• 2011: CROSSWORDS and YOU course, Maya's Mix crossword program
• 2013: 100th anniversary of Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", with many commemorative puzzles
• 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019: NYT Super Mega

2010

• iPad and mobile crossword apps; e.g., Crosswords
• Rubicon (TV show): Episode 1: Will Travers, an intelligence analyst at the American Policy Institute (API), spots
  related crossword answers [Java; NYT] in multiple newspapers involving the government, suicides, conspiracies, ...
• Top 10 crosswords in fiction, no 5: Rubicon Guardian; 7/12/2012
• How I Met Your Mother TV series;
  Robots Versus Wrestlers [S5E22], the pseudo-intellectual Ted is thrilled when he discovers at a high society
  cocktail party that one of the guests is Will Shortz, and Ted is burning to ask Shortz about the use of Ulee's Gold
  in the puzzles. This piece of puzzle subculture becomes fodder for the puzzle reference on the show.
  Ted suspects it is due to the combination of vowels, and in an amusing cameo, Shortz confirms Ted's hypothesis.
• A Way With Words (song) (video; 5:49) by Amanda Yesnowitz and Brian Cimmet at ACPT 2010:
  article & lyrics: "I love words. I love words. I love glorious, uproarious, notorious words
  Wouldn't that be natural for someone like me -- A dame whose name goes literally from A to Z."; NYT
• Monday's Crossword (song) by Drew Citron, album Drew Citron; MayasMix @ 68:50
• Crossword (jazz) by Crossover Jazz Trio & Tino Tracanna, album 3 Words; MayasMix @ 03:20
• Crossword (movie): "On a significant day in her life, a lonely woman who finds solace in the daily crossword
  finds that the answers to the clues are all around her. Is it magic, coincidence or something else entirely?"

2011

• "Sacked News of the World staff... buried a host of insults
  directed at Rebekah Brooks in the final paper's crossword.
  Answers included 'deplored', 'tart', 'stench' and 'disaster.'"
  ~15 Fascinating Facts About Crosswords: #14
• CROSSWORDS and YOU (this course) first offered;
  Ashland and Medford [Spring];
  crossword courses offered at other OLLIs: Santa Clara Univ.: 2007;
  Univ. of So. Miss.: 2009; Stony Brook Univ.: 2013; UNC Asheville: 2013; Penn State Univ.: 2014
• Maya's Mix Crossword program on Apr 29 (radio show) on KSKQ-LP 94.9 FM (Ashland);
  Maya's Mix on Facebook; note: "MayasMix @ mm:ss" references are to start times to this program;
  audio no longer publicly available
• OLLI LINK crossword: "An OLLI Olio: Ooh La La" puzzle: interactive, print (Nov 2011)
• Puzzled by People (song) (video; 3:10) by The Streets, album Computers and Blues; MayasMix @ 07:45;
  lyrics: "I'm pretty good at puzzles but puzzled by people / Sometimes you never find the answer
  We never had a crossword (crossed word) / My words got lost and you never heard
  I'm 2 (too) down you're one across the room / Beginning with I and ending in U"
• Mrs Parker & the Vicious Crossword (movie); "Mrs Parker was told by her beau
  that by solving a crossword, which he compiled, she'd know his true feelings.
  One hitch - she's stuck on the last clue, and God isn't helping."
• Crossword poem; Sally Bliumis-Dunn; Art Beat; PBS; 9/19/2011
• King Of The Crosswords (song) (video; 2:57) by David Mead, album Dudes;
  lyrics: "Give him that pen and the New York Times /
  And his hands would start movin' in a blur
  Even without a dictionary he'd be done in five / He's the king of the crosswords"
• The Hour TV series
• BBC's 'The Hour': A Cold War enigma, layered in '50s style
  "the professor had a side hobby of submitting crossword puzzles to newspapers,
  which, when printed, seemed to be delivering coded messages to certain readers";
  WaPo; 8/16/2011

2012

• Red (song) (video; 4:02) by Taylor Swift, album Red;
  lyrics: "Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer"
• The Computer's Next Conquest: Crosswords "Dr.Fill" (AI) at ACPT 2012; NYT; 3/17/2012
• Crossword Puzzle Stirs Controversy in Venezuela Neptali Segovia,
  a veteran crossword writer, is accused of hiding a coded message urging
  the death of President Hugo Chavez's brother; NYT; 5/11/2012
• Crossword poem; Lloyd Schwartz; 12/20/2012
• A.C.P.T. 2012: Inside the Judges' Room 3/17/2012
• 2012 Orca Awards, Nominees annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2013

• "In January 2013, the Guardian's Araucaria,...
  who has been writing their crosswords for 50 years, told readers that
  he was dying by saying 'he has 18 down (cancer) of the 19 (oesophagus),
  which is being treated with 13 15 (palliative care)'"
  ~15 Fascinating Facts About Crosswords: #15
• Crossword Maker for Cruciverbalists released iPad
• On Oreo's 101st Birthday, 13 Facts About The Cookie
  That Will Blow Your Mind 3/6/2013
• 100th anniversary of Arthur Wynne's "word-cross"
  -- many commemorative articles and puzzles
• "Word conundrums
  Vertical Horizontal
  O Arthur Wynne!" ~Puzzling Haiku
• Puzzazz: Anniversary Puzzles [list]; Articles; Twas the Nite Before Crosswas [poem]
• 100th Anniversary Roundup! articles, puzzles; 12/26/2013
• Google Doodle: 100th Anniversary of the Crossword Puzzle interactive puzzle by Merl Reagle; 12/21/2013
• 100 Years Later, the Crossword Is Still the King of Puzzles Wired; 12/21/2013
• Happy 100th Birthday to the Crossword Scientific American; SciAm; 12/21/2013
• The Crossword Puzzle Turns 100: The 'King of Crossword' on Its Strange History
  Merl Reagle spills on the strange origins of the puzzle
  -- and his own favorite memories from decades of creating his own clues; 12/21/2013
• Quite a Milestone, as Milestones Go Wordplay blog; NYT; 12/20/2013; .puz; $
• Google Celebrates 100 Years of Crossword Puzzles Slate; 12/20/2013
• The Shape Of Clues To Come: The Crossword At 100 Ben Tausig; The Awl; 12/20/2013
• I Volunteer as Tribute Andy Kravis; .pdf, .puz; 12/20/2013
• What Did We Learn About the NSA This Year?
  crossword centennial puzzle in honor of NSA 'word games'; EFF; 12/20/2013
• A Special Centennial Puzzle .pdf; Orange County Register; David Steinberg; 12/20/2013
• Centennial: puz.pdf, sol.pdf Newsday; Stanley Newman; 12/20/2013
• Up, Up and (when I catch my breath) Away Patrick Merrell; .pdf, .puz; 12/20/2013
• 100 years of crosswords: the first appeared in New York on 21.12.1913
  Arthur Wynne left Liverpool for the US, left farming for journalism and then left millions
  delighting in solving his invention; Guardian; 12/20/2013
• Crossword Puzzles Turn 100: The History Of The Art Form And
  The Professional Standards Of Puzzle Makers 12/20/2013
• Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Crossword with a GWR Puzzle!
  Guiness World Records; 12/19/2013
• Will Shortz on the crossword's 100th anniversary CBC; audio: 13:12; 12/19/2013
• The 100th anniversary of the crossword puzzle with Merl Reagle
  Radio Times; audio: 51:45; 12/19/2013
• 100 Years Of Solvitude: A Reported Crossword Puzzle NPR; 12/19/2013; .pdf, .puz
• The New York World 100th anniversary crossword original crossword publisher; 12/19/2013; puzzle
• Word Up: Youth Fills in the Blanks as Crosswords Turn 100 Finn Vigeland; 12/20/2013
• The Crossword Turns 100 (Across) John Chaneski; AMA theme; 12/21/2013
• Celebrating 100 years of cr_ssw_rds Al Jazeera; Francis Heaney; 12/18/2013; puzzle; solution
• Who invented crosswords?
  Many people did, though Arthur Wynne did more than anyone; Economist; 12/19/2013
• What's a 9-Letter Word for a 100-Year-Old Puzzle? Smithsonian; 12/16/2013
• LA Times solution; 12/12/2013
• The crossword is 100 years old and thriving Toronto Star; 12/6/2013
• "A Winning Combo": a commemorative puzzle by Steve Weyer; interactive, print;
  Puzzle (on right) is a mashup of Wynne's diamond-shaped original (in center), with 4 corner puzzles.
  It could also be thought of as a time capsule with its inner original words and clues (a few with notes
  for solvers of our era); the outer contemporary sections describe the puzzle (who, where, why, when,
  what), along with words/clues that would not have been known to solvers of that era; 3/20/2013
• "Crunch Time" latcrossword, crosswordkathy Reagle; 97th anniversary, featuring OREO; 12/19/2010
• Dad's Crossword by Duane Keiser artwork;
  "I don't think he [Dad] even reads the news anymore in the paper -- he pulls out the crossword and throws the rest away."
• Murder by Meta Kickstarter effort; features 8 meta crosswords
• 2013 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2014

• A Mini History of Our Mini Crossword The Times's little crossword puzzle started out as a big experiment.
  We never expected that the form would find a devoted following all its own; NYT; 3/26/2019
• 'Crosswords make my life': Puzzle innovator celebrates her 100th birthday
  Bernice Gordon; first centenarian to have a grid printed in NYT; rebus pioneer; 1/13/2014
• 2014 Orca Awards: Best Crossword, Gimmick, Freestyle, Sunday-sized,
  Easy, Nominees annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2015

• Bernice Gordon, died 1/29/2015
• Merl Reagle, January 5, 1950 - August 22, 2015 prolific, punny cruciverbalist; NYT; 8/22/2015;
  Wikipedia: Merl Reagle
• Brooklyn 99 TV series;
  The Mattress [S3E7], Jake and Amy discuss their relationship with their buttoned-up and intellectual commander,
  Captain Holt. Amy admits that she almost ended their relationship when she discovered that Jake
  was unfamiliar with Will Shortz. Captain Holt is flabbergasted that anyone could be unaware of Shortz,
  and this interchange positions Amy and Captain Holt in positions of intellectual superiority over Jake.
  
  The Puzzle Master [S5E15] (2019) incorporates the New York Times crossword more deeply into the plot when
  Jake and Amy must solve a set of arsons connected to a well-known puzzle author. Will Shortz has a cameo
  as a rival crossword puzzle author, which is a nod to his sense of humor about the puzzle's position in popular culture.
• Crossword Puzzles, Pinball, & Chess origins of three popular games worldwide; 0:30
• "A 15-year-old boy... won the Italian crossword championship in 2015.
  He was the youngest winner in the event's history.
  He defeated 162 other solvers, including four former national champions,
  to win the tournament's gold cup." ~NYT Puzzle Mania, p. 11, 12/17/2017
• 2015 Orca Awards: Best Crossword, Clue and Constructor, Gimmick, Meta,
  Freestyle and Tournament, Sunday-sized, Easy annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2016

• NYT Super Mega: 50 x 50, 728-clues; 12/18/2016; clues (.png), answers (.pdf)
• And the Winners Are ... NYT; 1/4/2017
• The story behind The New York Times' largest and most ambitious crossword puzzle
  Verge; 12/18/2016
• Puzzle Mania! Will Shortz's Inside Look podcast: 11:25; special 16 pp. NYT paper-only section:
  Super Mega; Sudoku; Acrostics; Word games; Visual puzzles; NYT; 12/16/2016
• Watch ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Unveil a New (Crossword) Puzzle Format video; 6/7/2016
• A.C.P.T. 2016: Missing Merl Reagle and Going Into the Finals the "MERL" award; 4/3/2016
• 2016 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2017

• The New York Times Celebrates 75 Years of Crosswords a brief history; NYT; 2/14/2017
• NYT Super Mega: 53 x 53; 12/17/2017; puzzle (.pdf) ; answers (.pdf)
• And the Winners Are: Part I: The Winners of the 2017 Super Mega Crossword Contest;
  Part II: Report on the 'Hidden Contest' NYT; 1/5/2018
• Crosswords with Friends from Zynga
• The Riddle of the Sphinx (Inside No. 9) TV; Wikipedia;
  Nina is a young woman seeking answers to the Varsity cryptic crossword;
  Professor Nigel Squires pseudonymously sets the crossword using the name Sphinx.
• The Year in Crosswords twilliamcampbell; 2017
• 2017 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2018

• Forever comedy series; Fred Armisen’s character is frequently seen working
  on crossword puzzles, although he's not particularly good at them
• And the Winners Are, Part 1: Report on the 'Super Mega' Crossword Contest
  50 x 50 in 12/2018; spoiler alert; solution; NYT; 1/11/2019
• SuperMega includes link to .jpz file; 12/16/2018
• Introducing The New Yorker Crossword Puzzle 4/30/2018
• The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture by Adrienne Raphel.
  .pdf; Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences;
  2020 book: Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords
  and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them
• The Puzzlemaker: Murder Is Only A Word Away by Brian Christopher;
  After 10 years' service as a cryptographer with MI6 during the cold war, the extremely shy and reclusive George Withers
  becomes editor and compiler of the Sunday Times crossword. 30 years later and now in his 60's, an old MI6 colleague
  asks him to place a code within the Sunday Times cryptic crossword puzzle. George is totally unaware the code is a catalyst
  for a number of gruesome deaths around the world. The Serbian father of one of the victims discovers the puzzlemaker
  had something to do with his son's death, and goes on the hunt. Georges' quiet world of puzzles changes into a nightmare
  hunt through the streets of London. While on the run he tries to decipher that last fatal cryptic code in the puzzle
  he got from his friend, who has now disappeared, and hopefully save his own life and others near to him.
• Crossword Two people have a difficult time talking about sensitive subjects and a crossword puzzle
  seemingly with a mind of its own leads the couple down the path of discovery; 0:09
• The Year in Crosswords twilliamcampbell; 2018
• 2018 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2019

• NYT Puzzle Mania, incl. Super Mega 50 x 50; 12/15/2019
• And the Winners Are: The 'Super Mega' Crossword Contest NYT; 1/11/2020
• And the Winner of the 2019 A.C.P.T. Is ... NYT; 3/24/2019
• The New York Times Tops 5 Million Subscriptions as Ads Decline
  in 2019, 3.5 million digital-only news customers, ~1M crosswords and cooking; NYT; 2/6/2020
• The Crossword Mysteries: Hallmark Mysteries (TV series); a brilliant crossword puzzle editor (Chabert)
  finds her life turned upside-down when she is pulled into a police investigation after several of the clues in her
  recent puzzles are linked to unsolved crimes. Proving her innocence means leaving the comfort of her sheltered world
  and working with a tough police detective (Elliott), puzzling through clues together in order to crack the case,
  as the two are fish out of water in each other's worlds.
• Lacey Chabert launches a new Hallmark mystery movie series executive producer: Will Shortz; 3/6/2019
• Crossword Mysteries: A Puzzle to Die For A crossword is found on the murdered owner of a burglarized art gallery.
  Tess, a Sentinel crossword editor, finds clues in crosswords. Eventually, detective Logan accepts her clues and help.
  Tess is also running a crossword tournament; 3/10/2019
• Crossword Mysteries: Proposing Murder Tess and Logan are back solving mysteries as an old friend of Tess's
  is found dead just before he was going to propose to his girlfriend. Codes, cyphers, and crossword puzzles
  all lend a hand at finding the killer as Tess and Logan try to find a way to work together to decipher the clues; 10/13/2019
• How Crosswords Came of Age in the 2010s
  discussion of increased diversity of constructors in gender & age;
  Ten of the decade’s favorite entries speak to the color and comprehensiveness of modern puzzles:
  MEME, SIM, SEXT, TWEET, N.L. EAST, NICKI MINAJ, LGBT, LOL, BARISTA, EDIBLE UNDERWEAR;
  Smithsonian; 12/30/2019
• The Decade in New York Times Crosswords and Games
  new people, diversity, crossword community, crossword formats, other games;
  Shortz's contribution of pop culture and vernacular made the Crossword more interesting;
  "they require less dictionary-type knowledge and more creative thinking;"
  "embrace of vernacular-- I love the conversational long answers.The clues and answers are often so timely.
  I love being up-to-date with the latest slang and rap stars. I have a lot more trivia in my head";
  Increases in pay rates for puzzle makers; Technological Advances Make the Puzzle More Accessible; NYT; 12/27/2019
• The Year in Crosswords twilliamcampbell; 2019
• 2019 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

References

• The Year in Crosswords: 2017, 2018, 2019
• Wikipedia: 2010s
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 12: The Present and Beyond
  Discovery of Earth's Twin planet; Autonomous Cars; Wearable Technology; Growing the Visual Funnel (optics);
  Wide-Area Surveillance; AR (augmented reality), 3D printing; device convergence; Internet Memes; Kim Dotcom;
  Prosthetic Athletics; "Pluto Switch" (specialized hardware); Healthcare; Wired; 2/8/2013

---

Highlights | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | References

---

Highlights

• 2020: Covid; Constructing Crosswords offered; Thinking Inside the Box by Adrienne Raphel
• 2021: An A.I. (Dr. Fill) Wins ACPT 2021; NYT abandons .puz files

2020

• Constructing Crosswords -- new OLLI course; Spring 2020
• COVID-19: many solve crosswords at home and/or online; section: Why: Pandemic
• ACPT crossword tournament (ACPT; Stamford in March) cancelled due to pandemic
• Crossword Tournament From Your Couch an online, synchronous, live-streamed
  crossword solving competition; puzzles; 3/20/2020

• 
  

  Oreo Built a 'Doomsday' Vault to Protect Its Recipe and Cookies
  near famed Svaldbard Global Seed Vault in Norway; videos;
  "In Case of Apocalypse, Go To: 78° 08’ 58.1” N, 16° 01’ 59.7” E"; 10/26/2020

• Tenet; Wikipedia film
• The ancient palindrome that explains Christopher Nolan's Tenet
  A puzzle Sator Square dug up all over Europe holds the key to Tene
  -- and turns it into more than a movie; 9/4/2020
• NYT Puzzle Mania; store.nytimes.com a special 12-page newspaper section
  with more than 30 confounding conundrums and puzzles to entertain the whole family
  — including the Super Mega, 50 x 51 crossword; 12/2020
• Will Shortz announces the winners of the 'Super Mega' Crossword contest
  Did you find the hidden message? NYT; 1/13/2021
• NYT releases an Augmented Reality Instagram demo of "Shattered Crosswords".
• The New York Times' crossword can now haunt your living room in augmented reality
  A small crossword sits on whatever surface you’ve picked, while a cloud of letter shards hovers above it.
  As you move your camera around, the change in perspective will reveal the words that solve the puzzle;
  Verge; 12/22/2020
• see section: Sources: Applications
• Hallmark Mysteries: Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver; 1/5/2020;
  When a famous magician drops dead in the middle of a performance, in front of a packed crowd,
  could this seemingly natural death actually be murder? Tess Harper (Chabert), the New York Sentinel
  Crosswords editor is once again teamed up with NYPD’s finest detective, Logan O’Connor (Elliott).
  The two have to find a way to work together to uncover the challenging clues to solve this murder,
  while they grow close together. ~Abracadaver : Everything You Need To Know
• ‘Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver’: Release date, plot, cast, news,
  and all you need to know 8/25/2020
• Inside the Box by David Kwong play;
  Review: What’s ‘Inside the Box’? A Rewarding (Rewording) Time
  the noted cruciverbalist offers a collection of games
  built for Zoom that let the audience be part of the puzzle; NYT; 10/14/2020
• The Crossword Show 90-minute live comedy performance hosted by Zach Sherwin,
  in which a panel of guest entertainers solves an actual crossword puzzle onstage in front of an audience,
  with everything displayed on a big screen so the crowd can follow along.
• Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them
  by Adrienne Raphel; 3/17/2020; "The crossword is a feature of the modern world, inspiring daily devotion and obsession
  from not just everyday citizens looking to pass the time but icons of American life, such as Bill Clinton, Yo-Yo Ma, and Martha Stewart.
  It was invented in 1913, almost by accident, when a newspaper editor at the New York World was casting around for something
  to fill some empty column space for that year's Christmas edition. Practically overnight, it became a roaring commercial success,
  and ever since then has been an essential ingredient of any newspaper worth its salt. Indeed, paradoxically, its popularity has
  never been greater, even as the world of media and newspapers, its natural habitat, has undergone a perilous digital transformation.
  But why, exactly, are its satisfactions so sweet that over the decades has it become a fixture of breakfast tables, nightstands,
  and commutes, and even given rise to competitive crossword tournaments?
  
  Blending first-person reporting from the world of crosswords with a delightful telling of its rich literary history, Adrienne Raphel
  dives into the secrets of this classic pastime. At the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, she rubs shoulders with
  elite solvers of the world, doing her level best to hold her own; aboard a crossword themed cruise, she picks the brains of the
  enthusiasts whose idea of a good time is a week on the high seas with nothing but crosswords to do; and, visiting the home
  and office of Will Shortz, New York Times crossword puzzle editor and NPR's official "Puzzlemaster," she goes behind the scenes
  to see for herself how the world's gold standard of puzzles is made.
  
  Equal parts ingenious and fun, Thinking Inside the Box is a love letter to the infinite joys and playful possibilities of language,
  and will be a treat for die-hard cruciverbalists and first-time solvers alike."
• Iowa Writers' Workshop alum's obsession with word puzzles leads to book on crosswords 3/13/2021
• "All It Takes Is Inexhaustible Patience, Limitless Time, and a Warped Mind":
  A Conversation with Adrienne Raphel 5/27/2020
• 1-across and 2-down: The history and mysteries of the crossword puzzle CBC; 5/15/2020
• Crosswords Have Always Been a Solace in Times of Trouble.
  Here's How the 20th Century's Toughest Moments Shaped the Puzzle's History Time; 3/27/2020
• Thinking Inside the Box by Adrienne Raphel review -- adventures with crosswords
  the charm of the crossword, from its origins in US newspapers to its use as a novelist's plot device; Guard; 3/18/2020
• Here’s Looking at You, Grid: A History of Crosswords and Their Fans review; NYT; 3/17/2020
• Invented over 100 years ago, they became so crazily addictive they were said to put families,
  business and even D-day in peril. But, as a new book reveals, the most cryptic question of all is
  why their creator never made a penny 3/13/2020
• The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture by Adrienne Raphel.
  .pdf; 2018, Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
• Bad Moves made a 'songs to chill and crossword to' playlist for their interactive crossword puzzle
  "Sometimes when things feel out of control, it can be nice to throw yourself into a problem you know you can solve.
  That's often the appeal of a crossword puzzle. You can lose yourself in it, a distraction from outside circumstances,
  but it's also not mindless. When things feel uncertain you can reclaim a little bit of your agency working line by line
  towards a solution. Well, things have never felt more uncertain than now. Fortunately, we have this Bad Moves
  themed crossword to share with anyone looking for a distraction. To accompany it, we've also put together this
  playlist of tunes we might listen to while working on a crossword puzzle. Happy solving!" web crossword; 'End Game'
  video, lyrics; 5/21/2020
• Crosswords song; Olivia Dean;
  an ode to infatuation, and a reminder that a lovely hobby does not a suitable partner make
• The Year In Crosswords, 2020
  controversies; Raphel’s Thinking Inside the Box;
  publications, blogs, collections; accomplishments, firsts, tournaments;
  crowdfunding; people, constructors; scholarly works; 12/31/2020
• 2020 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2021

• 10th Anniversary of CROSSWORDS and YOU (this course)!
• An A.I. Finally Won an Elite Crossword Tournament (ACPT 2021)
  Its name is Dr. Fill, and it isn't allowed to keep the prize money; Slate; 4/27/2021;
  (more articles: Solving: References: AI)
• Crossword Fans Are Mad At The New York Times no .puz files; 8/3/2021
• NYT Games No Longer Available on Across Lite as of Aug. 10 i.e., no .puz files; 8/2/2021
• Cartoons & Puzzles Issue NewYorker; 12/20/2021
• THE CROSSWORD PLAY (or Ezmeranda's Gift) by Donna Hoke
  in THE CROSSWORD PLAY we join an expert level crossword puzzlemaker in a puzzle-making workshop, where she
  guides us through the conventions, strictures and rules of crossword puzzle creation -- until things get a bit unruly
• Brennan Elliott and Lacey Chabert Are Back Together
  Crossword Puzzle Mysteries: Riddle Me Dead 4/9/2021
• 'Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent; Lacey Chabert, Brennan Elliott Return
  In Hallmark’s 'Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent' 1/12/2021
• 'Crossword City Chronicles' Gets 1/25/2021 Steam Release! 1/17/2021
• Letters to Margaret a romance graphic novel by Hayley Gold;
  "If you thought the world of crosswords was black and white, you’d be... mostly right.
  They, like all of us, are caught in a highly polarized imbroglio between sides stuck in their
  black and white thinking. Well, maybe it’s time to consider how the other side sees things.
  So, I made a similarly polarized comic. It’s so polarized that it’s literally divided in half.
  The same series of events are twice-told, each from a different character’s perspective,
  and each packing a different set of solvable crosswords by Mike Selinker and Andy Kravis.
  You can solve along and take the puzzles apart with the characters, maybe gaining new
  perspectives on things as you work your way through each side.
  
  One side’s protagonist, Derry Down, believes that the New York Times crossword reinforces
  stereotypes, is non-inclusive, and uses offensive clues. Across the aisle (and the bookbinding)
  is Margaret "Maggie" A. Cross, who's maddened by blogger critiques that call for stemming
  the choice of words and topics broached in the NYT crossword in the name of sensitivity.
  The twosome's opinions clash on the web, in the crossword blogosphere, and IRL on the
  campus of Columbia University — but to complicate things, Maggie is visited by the voice
  of puzzles past: Margaret Farrar. The first editor of the Times crossword emerges in the form
  of letters, as Ms. Farrar attempts to edit Maggie’s amateur puzzle with a 1960s sensibility."
• One Step Sideways and 13 Down by Lucy Burnett;
  poetry was devised from collaging crossword clues from the newspaper, a process that
  stems from a preference for asking questions over providing answers. At the same time
  a kind of alternative surreal political commentary emerges from the gaps provided by the clue
• My Mother as a Crossword Puzzle Eleanor Booker; page 1, page 2
• The Marlow Murder Club
  a classic cosy mystery (and first in a series) with UK-based, crossword-setting, 77-year-old heroine Judith Potts
• The Year in Crosswords, 2021
  NYT supports more flexible layout but dropped .puz (Across Lite) files/format;
  AI program Dr. Fill won its first American Crossword Puzzle Tournament;
  many discussions/puzzles about inclusiveness:
  Hayley Gold's romance novel Letters to Margaret, NYT did a Black constructors week,
  David Steinberg published crosswords from LGBTQ+-identifying constructors at Universal;
  publications, crowdfunding, word lists, tools;
  accomplishments, firsts, tournaments;
  media, podcasts; theater; gaming; fun with data;
  people, constructors; scholarly works; 1/1/2022
• Orca Awards -- none in 2021?

2022

• And the Winners Are: Super Mega 2021 NYT; 1/14/2022
• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament Registration is Open
  Apr 1-3, 2022; Stamford Marriott; NYT; 1/4/2022
• 44th ACPT Results 4/1-3/2022
• Get to Know the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament NYT; 4/1/2022
• I Couldn't Handle Failure. So I Decided to Embrace Losing. GH; 6/27/2022
• On the 2022 ACPT Taylor Hinman
• Lollapuzzoola 15: A Crossword Tournament Returns to NYC for its Quinceañera 9/13/2022
• Puzzle Mania - Dec. 2022 NYT; 12/18/2022
  This seventh edition of Puzzle Mania, published Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022, is the annual section
  of The NYT that entertains long past its cover date. This year you’ll need extra time to solve the
  “Super Mega” crossword, by Joel Fagliano, which is larger than ever before, at a whopping
  782 entries where the grid alone takes up three newspaper pages.
  Accompanying the crossword are seven mini puzzles by composer and quizzicist Greg Pliska.
  Together the crossword and mini puzzles are like a treasure hunt or escape room in newspaper form.
  Solve everything, then follow the directions to get a 'meta-answer.' Elsewhere in this issue are
  seven other variety puzzles and a “Super Seven Search” by Will Shortz on the front page.
• Super Mega 2022: Clues 782 clues
• Puzzle Mania Contest Puzzle Solutions Super Mega and Meta Puzzles; NYT; 1/10/2023
• And the 'Super Mega' Crossword Contest Winners Are... 7,766 submissions; NYT; 1/15/2023
• Wordplay's Favorite Crosswords of 2022 NYT; 12/29/2022
• Two Crosswords That Almost Broke Wordplay Thu: 2/3/2022, 9/15/2022; NYT; 12/29/2022
• A Look Back at 2022 Crossword Constructor Debuts
  more than 80 people had their first NYT crosswords published; NYT; 12/31/2022
• Sunday Crossword by J. Maya video; a song about crushes & butterflies,
  young love & big dreams, & the games we play when our feelings are too big for our words
• 9 Down Is Dead by Kenneth Toppell murder mystery with a crossword-loving killer
• Word Nerd play about cruciverbalist TV personality who comes to a moral crossroads; Yale
• The Year in Crosswords, 2022
  Wordle; more crosswords; diversity; tournaments; records; books; twilliamcampbell; 1/2/2023
• 2022 Orca Awards annual celebration of creativity in crossword construction and editing

2023

• Boswords Winter Wondersolve; 2/5
• St. Louis Crossword Tournament 3/4
• ACPT 3/31-4/2
• Meet Oregon's competitors in the 2023 ACPT Oreg; 3/27/2023
• ACPT 2023: 'evil' puzzle #5 4/19/2023
• Steve's NYT debut (Wed, 11/1/2023): articles & interviews, puzzle & reviews
• Will Shortz's Life as a 'Professional Puzzle Maker' 30 years as NYT editor; NYT; 11/16/2023
• 2023's Crossword Constructor Debuts 90 puzzle makers' first NYT Crossword published [lists Steve]; NYT; 12/11/2023
• Puzzle Mania 2023: Contest Rules, Clues and Answers everything you need to know about
  the eighth special print puzzle section; NYT; 12/13/2023
• How to Tackle a Humongous (50 x 50) Crossword Puzzle 768 clues; mid-week difficulty; NYT; 12/13/2023
• Super Mega 2023: store.nytimes.com newsprint, $6; clues; grid .jpg;
  other Puzzle Mania answers; 12/17/2023
• Here Are the Winners of the 2023 Super Mega Contest nearly 10,000 correct solution submissions; NYT; 1/18/2024
• "How does such a gargantuan project come together? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly:
  many, many hours of work. Discussions for this year’s Puzzle Mania started back in
  late July, and collection of the puzzles continued throughout the late summer and
  early fall. Fernanda Didini, a print designer, spent a month laying out the issue,
  culminating in a whirlwind week of testing and proof-reviewing just after Thanksgiving.
  It was a true team effort.
  
  This year’s puzzles come from a variety of sources. A group of Indian puzzle enthusiasts
  (known as Logic Masters India) have contributed a page of new logic puzzles. Joe DiPietro,
  one of The New York Times’s longest-running active crossword contributors, has constructed
  a 50x50 crossword (the Super Mega, as we call it) that comes with an embedded contest.
  And our very own Wyna Liu has made a Jumbo Connections board with nine categories instead
  of the usual four, culminating in a post-solve meta for you to uncover."
  ~Joel Fagliano; NYT Gameplay newsletter; 12/18/2023
• The Year in Crosswords 1/1/2024

2024

• "As you may have heard, I recently celebrated my 30th anniversary as editor of the NYT Crossword.
  Wow, a lot has changed over 30 years.
  
  When I started in 1993, the crosswords weren’t yet online and email was still new, so everything was done on paper.
  The Crossword was a department of one, and I pretty much did everything myself — editing, proofreading, fielding
  comments from the test solvers, answering submissions, responding to reader mail and doing anything else that
  needed doing. I remember working 60- or 70-hour weeks. To go on vacation, I had to edit ahead, because the
  crossword never stopped.
  
  Submissions in those days arrived on paper by mail. To edit a manuscript, I crossed out the contributor’s clues
  that I wanted to change and wrote new ones at the side. Accuracy was paramount, but I also edited for freshness,
  color, a sense of fun, New York Times style and the desired level of difficulty for the puzzle’s day of the week.
  On average, about half the clues were mine. Each Friday I’d take a week’s worth of edited puzzles to the old
  Times Building on 43rd Street in Manhattan to be typeset. Proofs would be sent to me a few days later for approval.
  
  My first few months on the job were rough. All 3 of my predecessors (Margaret Farrar, Will Weng and Eugene T. Maleska)
  were deceased, so I had no one to ask for advice. Previously I’d been the editor of Games magazine, which had
  younger readers and puzzles that were easier than those in The Times, so that was the audience I was used to.
  
  Well! Complaints poured in that I was making the puzzles too easy. OK, I thought, you want hard? I’ll show you hard!
  And I cranked up the difficulty. Predictably, complaints then poured in that I was making the puzzles too difficult.
  Eventually everything reached a happy medium.
  
  The Times Crossword went online in 1996. At first, digital solvers were a novelty; today they are a majority.
  Soon I was typesetting the puzzles myself on a home computer rather than The Times doing it, which eliminated
  the need for proofs going back and forth.
  
  As the Crossword became more popular, the number of submissions increased, especially after the movie
  “Wordplay” came out in 2006. We now receive nearly 200 submissions a week. Over time, The Times added
  KenKen (2009), the Mini (2014), a second page of puzzles in the The New York Times Magazine (2016),
  the annual Puzzle Mania section (also 2016) and more puzzles in the daily paper (2020) — not to mention
  numerous other online games.
  
  In short, there’s more work to do than ever. But now I collaborate with an extremely talented group of colleagues.
  
  What hasn’t changed: the same smart, educated, ingenious audience of Times readers. You are very special.
  Creating and editing puzzles for you is something I’ll never get tired of." ~Will Shortz, in Gameplay newsletter, 1/1/2024
• Tournaments Boswords: 2/4/24, ACPT: 4/5-4/7/24, Lollapuzzoola: NYT,
  Westwords: 6/23/24, Midwest Crossword Tournament: 10/5/24
• Orca Awards for 2023 crosswords; 3/10/2024
• What Do Crossword Puzzles Really Test?
  in her new book, Anna Shechtman argues for puzzles that reflect a broader sense
  of common knowledge; Atlantic; 3/12/2024
• Cluing in to the crossword's political meanings
  review of The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle by Anna Shechtman; WaPo; 3/29/2024

References

• The Year in Crosswords: 2020; 2021; 2022; 2023
• Wikipedia: 2020s

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Quotes | Summary | References: General | Augmented Reality

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Quotes

• "You're concerned about the future of your newspaper, yet... you leave out the crossword?
  Now you've eliminated the main reason I get the paper.
  I read other articles because they come in a package that has the crossword." a letter to a newspaper editor
• "It's from the newspapers... that people I know -- relatives and co-workers --
  have got the idea that crosswords are a prophylactic against Alzheimer's.
  Newspapers are of course also the place where crosswords (and now sudokus)
  are most readily available, so the association is presumably good for circulation." ~Alan Connor
• "The future ain't... what it used to be." ~Yogi Berra
• "I don't try to describe the future... I try to prevent it." ~Ray Bradbury
• "The best thing about the future is... that it comes only one day at a time." ~Abraham Lincoln
• "Prediction is very difficult,... especially about the future." ~Niels Bohr
• "The future will be... better tomorrow." ~Dan Quayle

Summary

• New puzzle styles?
• Digital vs. paper?
• Social: online collaboration and competition
• New user interfaces / augmented reality, e.g., "Shattered Crosswords"
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to solve or construct puzzles.
• "'What do you think will be the next evolution of crossword or puzzle themes?'
  
  As more people solve puzzles and become interested in constructing them, there are
  increasingly more creative and original ideas. One of my favorite parts of my job
  is to look through submissions. Every week we get about 150 to 200 that we sift
  through. Yes, we see many of the same ideas recycled and repeated, but we also
  see some truly novel concepts. I love opening a puzzle that makes me go 'Oh, wow!'
  
  As our team grows, we have the ability to be more artistic than we have in the past;
  we have an art director, Kathy Lee, who can make fun “overlays,” like in the
  WHAC-A-MOLE puzzle or the animation in the EVEL KNIEVEL tribute.
  (You won’t be able to see the overlays until the puzzle is completed.) We also
  have a tools and software team that’s committed to bringing new capabilities
  to the digital crossword. Since we ran our first picture-clue puzzle last July,
  we’ve had quite a few other submissions come in with visual elements that
  were once impossible to pull off in a digital format. I predict that we’ll see more
  puzzles with some visual or artistic element either in the grid or in the clues,
  as the puzzles that come out inspire more constructors to think outside the box."
  ~Christina Iverson; NYT Easy Mode newsletter; 2/16/2024

References

• sections: Augmented Reality; Puzzle Sources: Web Sites; Applications; AI (Artificial Intelligence): Solving, Construction
• OLLI Course: e-Books Steve's older OLLI course on e-Books and publishing
• How The New York Times is building experimental handwriting recognition for its crosswords app 1/17/2024
• "Puzzles pair well with reading the news": Why news outlets are getting into games (again) 8/2022
• Crossword Story
  Crossword Story is the fiction and crossword section of your favourite magazine combined.
  It's a beautiful experience for people who like to read and people who like to play word games.
  The basic premise for all the word games is simple -- read the text, build context,
  find the missing word/term. Android-only; 11/15/2021
• CoinSwitch Kuber’s interactive ‘Crossword ad’ aims to raise crypto awareness
  scannable and playable ad combined the functionality of a QR code with the interactivity of a Crossword; 11/10/2021
• Facing slowdown, New York Times eyes $100 billion games market 3/20/2021
• The New Yorker leans into crossword puzzles online and, now, in print 3/12/2021
• Solve crosswords as you read a comic in Letters to Margaret
  a new kind of comics storytelling using crosswords; 3/10/2021
• Are Crossword Puzzles the Key to Saving Print Media? 2/25/2021
• Down but Not Out: The Uncertain Future of the Crossword Puzzle
  the future of puzzling is as fluid as the English language itself; Atl; 7/11/2014
• Staying on the grid -- the past and future of crosswords in India 2/26/2014
• Will Shortz on the Future of Crossword Puzzles video: 1:35;
  on 100 Years of Crosswords video: 1:31;
  on the Evolution of Crossword Puzzles video: 3:09; 12/16/2013
• Crosswords at a Crossroad: The Puzzle Turns 100. What Is the Clue to Its Survival? thesis; Lynn J. Feigenbaum; Spring 2013
• The Experimental Crossword, And The Future wraparound; double initial pangram; cruciverbacomic; 8/27/2011
• Puzzling Future .pdf; pp. 21-22; 10/20/2010
• Science fiction crosswords and fact sites are for the young at heart 4/21/2010
• The Future Is Now ... and they got it wrong; crossword; 3/5/2010
• Crosswords at a Crossroad: The Puzzle Turns 100. What Is the Clue to Its Survival? Lynn Feigenbaum thesis; 8/2009
• The Ultimate Crossword Smackdown who writes better puzzles, humans or computers? Slate; 7/12/2006
• The Decades That Invented the Future: Part 12: The Present and Beyond Discovery of Earth's Twin planet;
  Autonomous Cars; Wearable Technology; Growing the Visual Funnel (optics); Wide-Area Surveillance;
  AR (augmented reality), 3D printing; device convergence; Internet Memes; Kim Dotcom; Prosthetic Athletics;
  "Pluto Switch" (specialized hardware); Healthcare; Wired; 2/8/2013

Augmented Reality; Shattered Crosswords

• NYT crossword in 3-D provided by phone's camera and an Instagram Augmented
  Reality (AR) "effect" -- only one-time Mini for 12/22/2020?
• A small crossword sits on whatever surface you’ve picked, while a cloud of letter shards hovers above it.
• As you move your camera around, the change in perspective will reveal the words that solve the puzzle
• Now You Too Can Look Like a Fool While Trying to Solve the AR New York Times Crossword Puzzle Giz; 12/23/2020
• The New York Times' crossword can now haunt your living room in augmented reality Verge; 12/22/2020
• more info & images from game's designer; video
• To try it (disclaimer: I am not an Instagram expert):
• Install, open Instagram app (iOS, Android)*
• Log into (or create) account; visit NYTimes profile page
• Grant permission (if necessary) for Instagram to access your Camera
• Access 'Shattered Crosswords' effect
• Simplest: direct link for mobile devices
• Usual (sometimes confusing) process:
• Tap the Your Story or Camera icon on the Instagram home screen.
  You can also swipe left from the home screen.
• At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a carousel of effects known as the effect tray.
  
• Scroll right to the end of the effect tray. Tap Browse Effects.
  Where Effects Appear on Instagram;
  How to Use Instagram Effects on iPhone and Android
• Select, or search: Shattered crosswords
• *If message appears: "Unable to use this effect on your device",
  try again later -- or perhaps your older device or OS may be incompatible.
• You'll need a relatively flat surface (or at least something your phone perceives as flat) and patience.
• Zoom, rotate, and pan to find words in a sea of yellow pieces.
• Just slowly move the fragments and the phone until you spot something
  that looks like a letter. Line them up to form a word, then reap the rewards.

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References: General | Music | Books

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General

• Wikipedia: general Crossword history; NYT
• History of crosswords and puzzles (from original: Storia delle parole crociate e del cruciverba)
• First NYT Crosswords
• Acrostics: Mystical to Mind-Boggling
• crosswordacademy.com; crosswordtournament.com; DBWebDesign; Edinformatics;
  Electricka; Encyc. Britannica; gizmodo.com; History by Day; hobbylark.com;
  infoplease.com; inventorspot.com; Hamel: news articles; pencils.com; PennyPress [.pdf];
  Telegraph; thinks.com; thoughtco.com; TV Tropes media references; WordPlays
• Unofficial: "National Puzzle Day" (Jan 29?); "Crossword Puzzle Day" (US: Jul 21?) or (US: Dec 21)
• WWII Code: HSW; Wikipedia; funfacts.com; Telegraph
• Can you solve the world's oldest crossword puzzle from 1913? 6/4/2022
• 10 of the Greatest Puzzles in History
  2. The Puzzle that (Helped) Save the Free World (1942): cryptic to recruit codebreakers
  7. The First Crossword (1913)
  MF; 4/25/2022
• Curious Questions: Who compiled the first crossword? 10/9/2021
• Crosswords Have Always Been a Solace in Times of Trouble.
  Here's How the 20th Century's Toughest Moments Shaped the Puzzle's History WWI, WWII; Time; 3/27/2020
• A History of Newspaper Puzzles word squares, crossword, jumble, sudoku; 2/5/2020
• How the Crossword Became an American Pastime Smithsonian; 12/2019
• The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture by Adrienne Raphel;
  .pdf; Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences; 2018;
  e.g., Chapter 1. Crosswords: A History, pp. 16-
• Crossword blog: a graphic novel about crosswords
  Paolo Bacilieri has written a graphic novel that’s in part a mystery story and in part a history of crosswords
  across different countries and cultures; Guard; 11/27/2017
• This thrilling graphic novel about crossword puzzles and spies is a little too clever at times Bacilieri; 5/7/2017
• PuzzleNation: TimeLine 12/17/2013
• The crossword has it's way with words 12/1/2013
• Ephemera Offers a Clue to Crossword Origins by Will Shortz 2/13/2013
• History of the NYT Sunday Crossword 12/29/2011
• What If Facebook Re-Envisioned the New York Times Crossword? Wired; 9/21/2011
• Great Moments in Onscreen Crossword Puzzle Solving video: 1:28; 8/18/2011
• For a Bereft Street Corner in Queens, a Red-Letter Day (Scrabble sign: 35T₁H₄ A₁V₄E₁N₁U₁E₁); NYT; 7/16/2011
• Alan's Mysterious World 10/21/2009
• "The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" 3/31/2008
• Puzzles In History Dell/Penny Press, .pdf; 2008
• A Scholarly Sort of Fun 5/7/1999
• Crossword In History Amer. Heritage, Vol. 27, Issue 6; 10/1976

Music

• SongLyrics; Lyrics007
• LyricsPond; ReverbNation
• LyricsG; LyricsMania

Books

• Author's ode to crosswords is right on the mark
  The Crossword Century: 100 Years of Witty Wordplay, Ingenious Puzzles, and Linguistic Mischief by Alan Connor; WaPo; 8/25/2014
• Crossworld: One Man's Journey into America's Crossword Obsession by Marc Romano New Yorker book review; 6/27/2005
• On Crosswords: Thoughts, Studies, Facts and Snark About a 100-Year-Old Pastime by T. Campbell
• The Crossword Obsession: The History and Lore of the World's Most Popular Pastime by Coral Amende
• Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis

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