CROSSWORDS: 1920s

Highlights | Craze | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 | 1929 | References

Highlights

• Many "firsts" for crosswords in publications and culture. Much debate about fads and obsessions.
• 1920: first crossword dictionary
• 1921: Margaret Farrar: assistant, then crossword editor at New York World; first crossword dictionary
• 1922: first UK magazine with crossword: uk'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"

1920

• Colonel H.W. Hill publishes the first "Quickway" Crossword Dictionary.

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)

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/ regular crossword]; 11/2/1924
• How Arthur Wynne's puzzle sparked a century-long crossword craze Express; 11/2/2024
• 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 appears: Daily Telegraph, 7/1925;
  "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
  (short 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
• "Strictly a Newspaper -- for Intelligent, Thoughtful People. Without Comics. Without Puzzles" ~NYT advertisement, 3/23/1925

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