The following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader OriginArthur Wynne was a writer for the game page of the New York World at the turn of the 19th century. One winter afternoon in 1913, while trying to think up new types of games for the newspaper's special Christmas edition, he came up with a way to adapt the "word squares" his grandfather had taught him when he was a boy. In a word square, all of the words in the square have to read the same horizontally and vertically, like the example below. But in the new puzzle Wynne came up with, the "across" words were different from the "down" words. It was more challenging, since there were more words to work on. Wynne's puzzle, which he called a "Word-Cross," debuted on Sunday December 21 as planned. And it was well-received. So many people wrote in to praise the puzzle that he put one in the paper the following Sunday and again on the third Sunday. (See if you can solve the World's First Crossword Puzzle)Reversal of FortuneFour 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. So for the next 10 years, if you wanted to work on a crossword puzzle, you had to buy the World.Enter Simon and SchusterAccording to legend, in 1924 a young Columbia University graduate named Richard L. Simon went to dinner at his Aunt Wixie's house. A 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 were no such books … and then hit on the idea of publishing one himself.
Hot off the PressesIt was literally an overnight success. The World's crossword puzzlers flocked to stores to get copies, and by the end of the year more than 300,000 crossword books had been sold. The book turned Simon & Schuster into a major publisher. (Today it's the largest U.S. publishing house and the second-largest publisher on earth). It also started a major craze. Crossword puzzles became a way of life in the 1920s. Newspaper started adding them to increase circulation. They inspired a Broadway hit called Games of 1925 and a hit song called "Crossword Mama, You Puzzle Me." 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.Crossword CasualtiesSome folks were driven over the edge by the craze. In 1924, 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." In 1925, a New York Telephone Co. employee shot his wife when she wouldn't help with a crossword puzzle. And in 1926, a Budapest man committed suicide, leaving an explanation in the form of a crossword puzzle. (No one could solve it.) Eventually, the craze died down. It took The New York Times to revive it. Today, The New York Times crossword puzzle is considered the puzzle of choice for hardcore addicts, but that hasn't always been true. Believe it or not, the Times resisted crosswords for more than two decades. Here's the story of how the newspaper changed its mind.Hard TimesBy the late 1930s, the crossword puzzle boom that started in 1924 had begun to fizzle - largely because the crossword puzzles in most newspapers had become predictable. They constantly repeat boring clues like "Headgear" (hat), "Writing instrument" (pen) and "Woody plant" (tree). But readers of The New York Times never got bored with their crossword puzzle … because the Times didn't have one. Then, as now, the Times considered itself America's "newspaper of record" and the guardian of journalistic standards. It scoffed at crossword puzzles as "a primitive form of mental exercise" in a1924 editorial, and refused to print them. Eighteen years later, it was one of the last puzzle holdouts among America's major newspapers.All this and World War IIStill, the Times had crossword puzzle fans on its staff. 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. And as America teetered on the brink of war in the early 1940s, the mood at the paper began to change. Less than two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Lester Markel, the Times' Sunday editor, dashed off a memo to his superiors suggesting that they consider adding a puzzle to the Sunday paper. The pressures and demands of the war played heavily on his mind. "We ought to proceed with the puzzle," he wrote, "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 of other … We ought not to try to do anything essentially different from what is now being done - except to do it better." Markel had met with Margaret Petherbridge Farrar, senior crossword puzzle editor at Simon & Schuster, and he attached a memo from her: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 … Getting StartedThe argument worked. The Times hired Farrar away from Simon & Schuster and made her its crossword editor, a position she held until she retired in 1969. The first puzzle appeared on February 15, 1942, in the Sunday magazine section. (Weekday puzzles weren't added until September 1950.) "The puzzle," writes Times reporter Richard Shepard, "was an instant success." 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. Today, more than 90 percent of newspapers around the world have crossword puzzles, and, according to a study by the U.S. Newspaper Advertising Bureau, 26 percent of people who read newspapers regularly attempt to solve them.Setting the PaceThe New York Times crossword puzzle sets the standard that other puzzles follow. Here are just some of the informal (but strictly followed) "rules" that were established by the Times' example: There can be no unkeyed letters - letters that appear in only one word of the puzzle. Every single letter of the puzzle must be part of both a horizontal and a vertical word.
Puzzling Facts
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 | The article above is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!   | ||
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Crossword Basics
Edited from Wikipedia
Crossword puzzles are said to be the most popular and widespread word game in the world, yet have a short history. The first crosswords appeared in England during the 19th century. They were of an elementary kind, apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally and printed in children's puzzle books and various periodicals.
Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine St. Nicholas, published since 1873.[6]
Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica. It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares; it included horizontal and vertical clues.[7]
On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle and Wynne as the inventor. Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to "crossword".[8][9] Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the World and spread to other newspapers; the Boston Globe, for example, was publishing them at least as early as 1917.[10]
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| The 1920s brought a crossword puzzle fad to the U.S. This young woman looks up “Egyptian Sun God” in the world’s smallest crossword puzzle dictionary, strapped to her wrist. |
In October 1922, 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!"[12]
In 1923 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."[13]
In the New Yorker's first issue, released in 1925, the "Jottings About Town" section wrote, "Judging from the number of solvers in the subway and "L" trains, the crossword puzzle bids fair to become a fad with New Yorkers." [14]
The first book of crossword puzzles appeared in 1924, published by Simon and Schuster. "This odd-looking book with a pencil attached to it"[15] was an instant hit and crossword puzzles became the craze of 1924.
Initially, some viewed the crossword puzzle with alarm and some expected (even hoped) that it would be a short-lived fad:
- In 1924, the New York Times complained of the "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."[16]
- A clergyman called the working of crossword puzzles "the mark of a childish mentality" and said, "There is no use for persons to pretend that working one of the puzzles carries any intellectual value with it.".[17]
- In 1925, Time Magazine noted that 9 Manhattan dailies and 14 other big newspapers were carrying crosswords and quoted opposing views as to whether, "This crossword craze will positively end by June!" or "The crossword puzzle is here to stay!"[18] In 1925, the New York Times noted, with approval, a scathing critique of crosswords by The New Republic; but concluded that "Fortunately, the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast and in a few months it will be forgotten."[19] and in 1929 declared, "The cross-word puzzle, it seems, has gone the way of all fads...."[20]
- In 1930, a correspondent noted, "Together with the Times of London, yours is the only journal of prominence that has never succumbed to the lure of the cross-word puzzle," and said that. "The craze—the fad—stage has passed, but there are still people numbering it to the millions who look for their daily cross-word puzzle as regularly as for the weather predictions."[21]
The New York Times, however, was not to publish a crossword puzzle until 1942; today, the Times puzzle is one of the most popular in the country.
The term crossword first appeared in a dictionary in 1930. Today, there are many popular crosswords distributed in American newspapers and online. The most prestigious (and among the most difficult to solve) are the New York Times puzzles. The first editor of the New York Times crossword was Margaret Farrar, who was editor from 1942 to 1969. She was succeeded by Will Weng, who was succeeded by Eugene T. Maleska. Since 1993, they have been edited by Will Shortz, the fourth crossword editor in Times. In 1978 Shortz founded and still directs the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Simon and Schuster continues to publish the Crossword Puzzle Book Series books that it began in 1924, currently under the editorship of John M. Samson. The original series ended in 2007 after 258 volumes. Since 2008, these books are now in the Mega series, appearing three times per year and each featuring 300 puzzles.
The British cryptic crossword was imported to the US in 1968 by composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim in New York magazine. Until 2006, the Atlantic Monthly regularly featured a cryptic crossword "puzzler" by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, which combines cryptic clues with diabolically ingenious variations on the construction of the puzzle itself. In both cases, no two puzzles are alike in construction and the intent of the puzzle authors is to entertain with novelty, not to establish new variations of the crossword genre.
In the United Kingdom, the Sunday Express was the first newspaper to publish a crossword on November 2, 1924, a Wynne puzzle adapted for the UK. The first crossword in Britain, according to Tony Augarde in his Oxford Guide to Word Games (1984), was in Pearson's Magazine for February 1922.
Crossword Puzzles in World War II
In 1944, Allied security officers were disturbed by the appearance, in a series of crosswords in the Daily Telegraph, of words that were secret code names for military operations planned as part of Operation Overlord. "Utah" (the code name for one of the landing sites) appeared in a puzzle on May 2, 1944. Subsequent puzzles included the landing site "Omaha" and "Mulberry"; the secret artificial harbours.
On June 2, four days before the invasion, the puzzle included both "Neptune" (the naval operations plan) and "Overlord". The author of the puzzles, a schoolteacher named Leonard Dawe, was interviewed. The investigators concluded that the appearance of the words was not an attempt to pass messages. According to a former crossword editor of The Daily Telegraph, in 1984 a former student of Dawe's claimed that he had picked up the words from soldiers' conversations around the army camps and included them when helping Dawe to choose words to fill crossword grids.[22]
Some cryptologists for Bletchley Park were selected after doing well in a crossword-solving competition.[23]A crossword is a word
puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white
and black shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters,
forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In
languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are
placed in the grid from left to right and from top to bottom. The shaded
squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
Terminology
The horizontal and
vertical lines of white cells into which answers are written are commonly
called entries or answers. The clues are usually called just that, or sometimes
definitions. White cells are sometimes called lights, while the shaded cells
are sometimes called darks, blanks, blocks, or just simply black squares or
shaded squares.
Squares in which answers begin are usually
numbered. The clues are then referred to by these numbers and a direction, for
example, "1-Across" or "2-Down". At the end of the clue the
total number of letters is sometimes given, depending on the style of puzzle
and country of publication. Some crosswords will also indicate the number of
words in a given answer, should there be more than one.
A white cell that is part of two entries
(both across and down) is called checked, keyed, or crossed. A white cell that
is part of only one entry is called unchecked, unkeyed, or uncrossed.
The creating of crosswords is called
cruciverbalism among its practitioners, who are referred to as cruciverbalists,
from the Latin for cross and word. Although the terms have existed since the
mid-1970s, non-cruciverbalists rarely use them, calling crossword creators
constructors or (especially outside the United States) setters or compilers.
Types
of Grids
Crossword grids such as
those appearing in most North American newspapers and magazines feature solid
areas of white squares. Every letter is checked and usually each answer is
required to contain at least three letters. In such puzzles shaded squares are
traditionally limited to about one-sixth of the design. Crossword grids
elsewhere, such as in Britain, South Africa, India and Australia, have a
lattice-like structure, with a higher percentage of shaded squares, leaving up
to half the letters in an answer unchecked. For example, if the top row has an
answer running all the way across, there will be no across answers in the
second row.
Another tradition in puzzle design (in
North America, India and Britain particularly) is that the grid should have
180-degree rotational (also known as "radial") symmetry, so that its
pattern appears the same if the paper is turned upside down. Most puzzle
designs also require that all white cells be orthogonally contiguous (that is,
connected in one mass through shared sides, to form a single polyomino).
The design of Japanese crossword grids
often follows two additional rules: that shaded cells may not share a side
(i.e., that they may not be orthogonally contiguous) and that the corner
squares must be white.
The
"Swedish-Style" grid (picture crosswords) uses no clue numbers, as
the clues are contained in the cells which would normally be shaded in other
countries. Arrows indicate in which direction the clues have to be answered,
vertical or horizontal. This style of grid is used in several countries other
than Sweden, usually in magazines with pages of A4 or similar size, but also in
the daily newspapers, covering entire pages. The grid often has one or more
photos replacing a block of squares as a clue to one or several answers, for
example, the name of a pop star, or some kind of rhyme or phrase that can be
associated with the photo. These puzzles usually have no symmetry in the grid
and instead often rely on a common theme (literature, music, nature, geography,
events of a special year, etc.) as the foundation of the combination of
illustrated clues and other blocks of clues.
Substantial variants from the usual forms
exist. Two of the common ones are barred crosswords, which use bold lines
between squares (instead of shaded squares) to separate answers and circular
designs, with answers entered either radially or in concentric circles. Free
form crosswords (crisscross puzzles), which have simple, asymmetric designs,
are often seen on school worksheets, kids' menus and other entertainment for
children. Grids forming shapes other than squares are also occasionally used.
Puzzles
are often one of several standard sizes. For example, many weekday puzzles
(such as the American New York Times crossword puzzle) are 15×15 squares, while
weekend puzzles may be 21×21, 23×23, or 25×25. The New York Times puzzles also
set a common pattern for American crosswords by increasing in difficulty
throughout the week: the Monday puzzles are the easiest and the puzzles get
harder until Saturday. The larger Sunday puzzle is approximately the same level
of difficulty as a weekday-size Thursday puzzle.[1] This has led U.S. solvers
to use the day of the week as a shorthand when describing how hard a puzzle is:
i.e., an easy puzzle may be referred to as a Monday or Tuesday, a
medium-difficulty puzzle as a Wednesday and a truly difficult puzzle as a
Saturday. One of the smallest crosswords in general distribution is a 4×4
crossword compiled daily by John Wilmes, distributed online by USA Today as
"QuickCross" and by Universal Uclick as "PlayFour."
Typically clues appear outside the grid,
divided into an across list and a Down list; the first cell of each entry
contains a number referenced by the clue lists. For example, the answer to a
clue labeled "17-Down" is entered with the first letter in the cell
numbered "17", proceeding down from there. Numbers are almost never
repeated; numbered cells are labeled consecutively, usually from left to right
across each row, starting with the top row and proceeding downward. Some
Japanese crosswords are numbered from top to bottom down each column, starting with
the leftmost column and proceeding right.
Clues:
Conventions & Types
Capitalization of answer
letters is conventionally ignored; crossword puzzles are typically filled in
and their answer sheets are almost universally published in all caps, except in
the rare cases of ambigrams. This ensures a proper name can have its initial
capital letter checked with a non-capitalizable letter in the intersecting
clue. Diacritical markings in foreign loanwords (or foreign-language words
appearing in English-language puzzles) are ignored for similar reasons.
Straight or quick clues are simple definitions of the answers. Some
clues may feature anagrams and these are usually explicitly described as such.
Often, a straight clue is not in itself sufficient to distinguish between
several possible answers (often synonyms), so the solver must make use of
checks to establish the correct answer with certainty. For example, the answer
to the clue "PC key" for a three-letter answer could be ESC, ALT,
TAB, DEL, or INS, so until a check is filled in, giving at least one of the
letters, the correct answer cannot be determined.
In most American-style crosswords, the majority
of the clues in the puzzle are straight clues, with the remainder being one of
the other types described below.
Crossword clues are generally consistent
with the solutions. For instance, clues and their solutions should always agree
in tense, number and degree.[2] If a clue is in the past tense, so is the
answer: thus "Traveled on horseback" would be a valid clue for the
solution RODE, but not for RIDE. Similarly, "Family members" would be
a valid clue for AUNTS but not UNCLE, while "More joyful" could clue
HAPPIER but not HAPPIEST. Some clue examples:
- Fill-in-the-blank clues are often the easiest in a puzzle and a good place to start solving, e.g., "_____ Boleyn" = ANNE.
- "Before and after" clues feature one word that is part of two phrases, often designated with parentheses and brackets, e.g., (Doing (____) keeper] = TIME.
- A question mark at the end of clue usually signals that the clue/answer combination involves some sort of pun or wordplay, e.g., "Grateful?" = ASHES, since a grate might be full of them.
Most widely-distributed American
crosswords today (e.g., the New York
Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, etc.) also contain colloquial answers (i.e., entries in
the puzzle grid that try to replicate everyday colloquial language). In such a
puzzle one might see phrases such as WHAT'S UP, AS IF or WHADDYA WANT.
In the hands of any but the most skilled
constructors, the constraints of the American-style grid (in which every letter
is checked) usually require a fair number of answers not to be dictionary
words. As a result, the following ways to clue abbreviations and other
non-words, although they can be found in "straight" British
crosswords, are much more common in American ones:
- Abbreviations, the use of a foreign language, variant spellings or other unusual word tricks are indicated in the clue. A crossword creator might choose to clue the answer SEN (as in the abbreviation for "senator") as "Washington bigwig: Abbr." or "Member of Cong.", with the abbreviation in the clue indicating that the answer is to be similarly abbreviated.
- The use of "Var." indicates the answer is a variant spelling (e.g., EMEER instead of EMIR), while the use of foreign language or a foreign place name within the clue indicates that the answer is also in a foreign language. For example, ETE (été, French for "summer") might be clued as "summer, in the Sorbonne". ROMA could be clued as "Italia's capital", whereas the clue "Italy's capital" would indicate the English spelling Rome.
- The eight possible abbreviations for a position on a compass, e.g., NNW (north-northwest) or ESE (east-southeast), occur with some frequency. They can be clued as simply "Compass point", where the desired answer is determined by a combination of logic—since the third letter can be only E or W and the second letter can be only N or S— and a process of elimination using checks. Alternatively, compass point answers are more frequently clued as "XXX to YYY direction", where XXX and YYY are two place names. For example, SSW might be clued as "New York to Washington DC dir". Similarly, a clue such as "Right on the map" means EAST. A clue could also consist of objects that point a direction, e.g., "vane dir." or "windsock dir.".
Roman numerals and arithmetic involving
them, frequently appear as well; the clue "IV times III" (4×3) would
yield XII (12).
In addition, partial answers are allowed
in American-style crosswords, where the answer represents part of a longer
phrase. For example, the clue "Mind your _____ Qs" gives the answer
PSAND (Ps and).
Non-dictionary phrases
are also allowed in answers. Thus, the clue "Mocked" could result in
the grid entry LAUGHED AT.
Crossword
Themes
Many American crossword
puzzles feature a "theme" consisting of a number of long entries
(generally three to five in a standard 15×15-square "weekday-size"
puzzle) that share some relationship, type of pun, or other element in common.
As an example, the New York Times crossword of April 26, 2005 by Sarah Keller,
edited by Will Shortz, featured five themed entries ending in the different
parts of a tree: SQUAREROOT, TABLELEAF, WARDROBETRUNK, BRAINSTEM and
BANKBRANCH.
The above is an example of a category
theme, where the theme elements are all members of the same set. Other types of
themes include:
- Quote themes, featuring a famous quote broken up into parts to fit in the grid (and usually clued as "Quote, part 1", "Quote, part 2", etc.)
- Rebus themes, where multiple letters or even symbols occupy a single square in the puzzle (e.g., BERMUDAΔ)
- Addition themes, where theme entries are created by adding a letter, letters, or word(s) to an existing word or phrase. For example, "Crucial pool shot?" = CRITICAL MASSE (formed by taking the phrase "critical mass" and adding an "e" on the end. All the theme entries in a given puzzle must be formed by the same process (so another entry might be "Greco-Roman buddy?" = WRESTLING MATE—"wrestling mat" with an "e" added on). An example of a multiple-letter addition (and one that does not occur at the end of the entry) might be "Crazy about kitchen storage?" = CABINET FEVER (derived from "cabin fever").[3]
- Subtraction themes, the reverse of the above, where letters are removed to make a new word or phrase.[3]
- Compound themes, where the starts or ends of the theme entries can all precede or follow another word, which is given elsewhere in the puzzle. For example, a puzzle with theme entries that begin with PAPER, BALL and WATER and elsewhere in the puzzle, the word BOY clued as "Word that can follow the start of [theme entries]".[3]
- Anniversary or tribute themes, commemorating a specific person, place, or event. For example, on October 7, 2011 the New York Times crossword commemorated the life of Apple CEO Steve Jobs who had died on October 5. Theme entries related to Jobs' life included MACINTOSH, PIXAR, THINK DIFFERENT, CREATIVE GENIUS, STEVE JOBS and APPLE.[3][4]
- Synonym themes, where the theme entries all contain synonyms, e.g., a Los Angeles Times puzzle featuring a set of theme entries that contain the words RAVEN, JET, EBONY and SABLE, all synonyms for "black"[3]
- Numerous other types have been identified, including spoonerisms, poems, shifted letters, rhyming phrases, puns, homophones and combinations of two or more of other types of themes.[3]
The Simon & Schuster Crossword Puzzle
Series has published many unusual themed crosswords. "Rosetta Stone",
by Sam Bellotto Jr., incorporates a Caesar cipher cryptogram as the theme; the
key to breaking the cipher is the answer to 1 across. Another unusual theme
requires the solver to use the answer to a clue as another clue. The answer to
that clue is the real solution.
Indirect
Clues
Many puzzles feature
clues involving wordplay which are to be taken metaphorically or in some sense
other than their literal meaning, requiring some form of lateral thinking.
Depending on the puzzle creator or the editor, this might be represented either
with a question mark at the end of the clue or with a modifier such as
"maybe" or "perhaps". In more difficult puzzles, the
indicator may be omitted, increasing ambiguity between a literal meaning and a
wordplay meaning. Examples:
- "Half a dance" could clue CAN (half of CANCAN) or CHA (half of CHACHA).
- If taken literally, "Start of spring" could clue MAR (for March), but it could also clue ESS, the spelled-out form of the starting letter S.
- "Nice summer?" clues ETE, summer in Nice, France (été being French for "summer"), rather than a nice (pleasant) summer. This clue also takes advantage of the fact that in American-style crosswords, the initial letter of a clue is always capitalized, whether or not it is a proper noun. In this clue, the initial capitalization further obscures whether the clue is referring to "nice" as in "pleasant" or "Nice" as in the French city.
- "Pay addition", taken literally, clues BONUS. When taken as an indirect clue, however, it could also clue OLA (the addition of -ola to pay- results in PAYOLA).
Cryptic
Crosswords
In cryptics, as only
half of the letters are typically checked and as there is usually no theme,
grid construction is far easier and the constructor focuses instead on the
difficult task of creating clues that contain a straight definition, a cryptic
definition and a "surface" meaning (each clue must parse as a
phrase).
Not to be confused with cryptograms, a
different form of puzzle based on a substitution cipher, in cryptic crosswords
(often called "cryptics") the clues are puzzles in themselves. A
typical clue contains both a definition at the beginning or end of the clue and
wordplay, which describes the word indicated by the definition and which may
not parse logically. Cryptics usually give the length of their answers in
parentheses after the clue. Certain signs indicate different wordplay. Cryptics
have a steeper "learning curve" than standard crosswords, as learning
to interpret the different types of cryptic clues can take some practice. In Great
Britain and throughout much of the Commonwealth, cryptics of varying degrees of
difficulty are featured in many newspapers.
There are several types of wordplay used
in cryptics. One is straightforward definition substitution using parts of a
word. For example, in one puzzle by Mel Taub, the answer IMPORTANT is given the
clue "To bring worker into the country may prove significant". The
explanation is that to import means "to bring into the country", the
"worker" is a worker ant and "significant" means important.
Here, "significant" is the straight definition (appearing here at the
end of the clue), "to bring worker into the country" is the wordplay
definition and "may prove" serves to link the two. Note that in a
cryptic clue, there is almost always only one answer that fits both the
definition and the wordplay, so that when one sees the answer, one knows that
it is the right answer—although it can sometimes be a challenge to figure out
why it is the right answer. A good cryptic clue should provide a fair and exact
definition of the answer, while at the same time being deliberately misleading.
Another type of wordplay used in cryptics
is the use of homophones. For example, the clue "A few, we hear, add up
(3)" is the clue for SUM. The straight definition is "add up",
meaning "totalize". The solver must guess that "we hear"
indicates a homophone and so a homophone of a synonym of "A few"
("some") is the answer. Other words relating to sound or hearing can
be used to signal the presence of a homophone clue (e.g., "aloud",
"audibly", "in conversation", etc.).
The double meaning is commonly used as
another form of wordplay. For example, "Cat's tongue (7)" is solved
by PERSIAN, since this is a type of cat, as well as a tongue, or language. This
is the only type of cryptic clue without wordplay—both parts of the clue are a
straight definition.
Cryptics often include anagrams, as well.
The clue "Ned T.'s seal cooked is rather bland (5,4)" is solved by
NEEDS SALT. The straight definition is "is rather bland" and the word
"cooked" is a hint to the solver that this clue is an anagram (the
letters have been "cooked", or jumbled up). Ignoring all punctuation,
"Ned T.'s seal" is an anagram for NEEDS SALT. Besides
"cooked", other common hints that the clue contains an anagram are
words such as "scrambled", "mixed up",
"confused", "baked" or "twisted".
Embedded words are another common trick in
cryptics. The clue "Bigotry aside, I'd take him (9)" is solved by
APARTHEID. The straight definition is "bigotry" and the wordplay
explains itself, indicated by the word "take" (since one word
"takes" another): "aside" means APART and I'd is simply ID,
so APART and ID "take" HE (which is, in cryptic crossword usage, a
perfectly good synonym for "him"). The answer could be elucidated as APART(HE)ID.
Another common clue type is the
"hidden clue" or "container", where the answer is hidden in
the text of the clue itself. For example, "Made a dug-out, buried and
passed away (4)" is solved by DEAD. The answer is written in the clue:
"maDE A Dug-out". "Buried" indicates that the answer is
embedded within the clue.
There are numerous other forms of wordplay
found in cryptic clues. Backwards words can be indicated by words like
"climbing", "retreating", or "ascending"
(depending on whether it is an across clue or a down clue) or by directional
indicators such as "going North" (meaning upwards) or
"West" (right-to-left); letters can be replaced or removed with
indicators such as "nothing rather than excellence" (meaning replace
E in a word with O); the letter I can be indicated by "me" or
"one;" the letter O can be indicated by "naught",
"nothing", "zero", or "a ring" (since it visually
resembles one); the letter X might be clued as "a cross", or
"ten" (as in the Roman numeral), or "an illiterate's
signature", or "sounds like your old flame" (homophone for
"ex").
"Senselessness" is solved by
"e", because "e" is what remains after removing (less)
"ness" from "sense".
With the different types
of wordplay and definition possibilities, the composer of a cryptic puzzle is
presented with many different possible ways to clue a given answer. Most desirable
are clues that are clean but deceptive, with a smooth surface reading (that is,
the resulting clue looks as natural a phrase as possible). The Usenet newsgroup
rec.puzzles.crosswords has a number of clueing competitions where contestants
all submit clues for the same word and a judge picks the best one.
In principle, each cryptic clue is usually
sufficient to define its answer uniquely, so it should be possible to answer
each clue without use of the grid. In practice, the use of checks is an important
aid to the solver.
The
First Entries
In the 'Quick' crossword
in the Daily Telegraph newspaper
(Sunday and Daily, UK), it has become a convention also to make the first few
words (usually two or three, but can be more) into a phrase. For example,
"Dimmer, Allies" would make "Demoralize" or "You, ill,
never, walk, alone" would become "You'll never walk alone". This
generally aids solvers in that if they have one of the words then they can
attempt to guess the phrase. This has also become popular among other British
newspapers.
Double-Clue
Lists
Sometimes newspapers
publish one grid that can be filled by solving either of two lists of clues -
usually a straight and a cryptic. The solutions given by the two lists may be
different, in which case the solver must decide at the outset which list they
are going to follow, or the solutions may be identical, in which case the
straight clues offer additional help for a solver having difficulty with the
cryptic clues. For example, the solution APARTHEID might be clued as
"Bigotry aside, I'd take him (9)" in the cryptic list and
"Racial separation (9)" in the straight list. Usually the straight
clue matches the straight part of the cryptic clue, but this is not necessarily
the case.
Every issue of GAMES Magazine contains a large crossword with a double-clue list,
under the title The World's Most Ornery Crossword; both lists are straight and
arrive at the same solution, but one list is significantly more challenging
than the other. The solver is prompted to fold a page in half, showing the grid
and the hard clues; the easy clues are tucked inside the fold, to be referenced
if the solver gets stuck.
A variant of the double-clue list is
commonly called Siamese Twins: two matching grids are provided and the two clue
lists are merged such that the two clues for each entry are displayed together
in random order. Determining which clue is to be applied to which grid is part
of the puzzle.
Other
Clue Variations
Any type of puzzle may
contain cross-references, where the answer to one clue forms part of another
clue, in which it is referred to by number and direction. E.g., a puzzle might
have 1-Across clued as "Central character in The Lord of the Rings" =
FRODO, with 17-Down clued as "Precious object for 1-Across" = RING.
When an answer is composed of multiple or
hyphenated words, some crosswords (especially in Britain) indicate the
structure of the answer. For example, "(3,5)" after a clue indicates
that the answer is composed of a three-letter word followed by a five-letter
word. Most American-style crosswords do not provide this information.
Here is a small example
of a regular crossword, to illustrate the format:
1
|
2
|
|||
3
|
4
|
|||
5
|
Across
1. Sheep sound (3)
3. Neither liquid nor gas (5)
5. Humour (3)
3. Neither liquid nor gas (5)
5. Humour (3)
Down
1. Road passenger
transport (3)
2. To permit (5)
4. Shortened form of Dorothy (3)
2. To permit (5)
4. Shortened form of Dorothy (3)
The solution to this
crossword is:
1B
|
9A
|
2A
|
.
|
.
|
9U
|
.
|
9L
|
.
|
.
|
3S
|
9O
|
9L
|
9I
|
4D
|
.
|
.
|
9O
|
.
|
9O
|
.
|
.
|
5W
|
9I
|
9T
|
A set of cryptic clues
that provide the same answers as above might be:
Across
1. Start of announcement
by British Airways sounds woolly? (3)
3. I sold out for real (5)
5. Wilde's intelligence (3)
3. I sold out for real (5)
5. Wilde's intelligence (3)
Down
1. Ferry sees submarine
rising (3)
2. Now without its initial after every warrant (5)
4. Do time? There's a point (3)
2. Now without its initial after every warrant (5)
4. Do time? There's a point (3)
How the clues work:
Across
1. start of announcement
= A; by = next to; British Airways = BA. Result is BA+A = BAA (which 'sounds
woolly', i.e. is the sound of a sheep).
3. 'out' commonly
implies an anagram (as in turned out). An anagram of I SOLD = SOLID, which
means real.
5. Double-definition:
(Oscar) Wilde was a famous wit and intelligence=wit. "Wilde's" in
this case is a contraction of "Wilde is" and not a possessive.
Down
1. submarine = SUB; rising
= backwards (in view of this being a Down clue). Result is BUS, as a verb,
meaning to ferry.
2. Now without its
initial = OW; after = following; every = ALL. Result = ALL+OW = ALLOW, meaning
to warrant.
4. Do = DO; time = T.
Result = DO+T = DOT, meaning a point.
Major
Crossword Variants
These are common
crossword variants that vary more from a regular crossword than just an unusual
grid shape or unusual clues; these crossword variants may be based on different
solving principles and require a different solving skill set.
Cipher
Crosswords
Published under various
trade names (including Code Breakers, Code Crackers and Kaidoku) and not to be
confused with cryptic crosswords (cipher text puzzles are commonly known as cryptograms),
a cipher crossword replaces the clues for each entry with clues for each white
cell of the grid - an integer from 1 to 26 inclusive is printed in the corner
of each. The objective, as any other crossword, is to determine the proper
letter for each cell; in a cipher crossword, the 26 numbers serve as a cipher
for those letters: cells that share matching numbers are filled with matching
letters and no two numbers stand for the same letter. All resultant entries
must be valid words. Usually, at least one number's letter is given at the
outset. English-language cipher crosswords are nearly always pangrammatic (all
letters of the alphabet appear in the solution). As these puzzles are closer to
codes than quizzes, they require a different skillset; many basic cryptographic
techniques, such as determining likely vowels, are key to solving these. Given
their pangrammaticity, a frequent start point is locating where 'Q' and 'U'
must appear.
Diagramless
Crosswords
In a diagramless
crossword, often called a diagramless for short or, in the UK, a skeleton
crossword or carte blanche, the grid offers overall dimensions, but the
locations of most of the clue numbers and shaded squares are unspecified. A
solver must deduce not only the answers to individual clues, but how to fit
together partially built-up clumps of answers into larger clumps with
properly-set shaded squares. Some of these puzzles follow the traditional
symmetry rule, others have left-right mirror symmetry and others have greater
levels of symmetry or outlines suggesting other shapes. If the symmetry of the
grid is given, the solver can use it to his/her advantage.
A variation is the Blankout puzzle in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine. The clues
are not individually numbered, but given in terms of the rows and columns of
the grid, which has rectangular symmetry. The list of clues gives hints of the
locations of some of the shaded squares even before one starts solving them,
e.g. there must be a shaded square where a row having no clues intersects a column
having no clues.
Fill-in
Crosswords
A fill-in crossword
(also known as crusadex or cruzadex) features a grid and the full list of words
to be entered in that grid, but does not give explicit clues for where each
word goes. The challenge is figuring out how to integrate the list of words
together within the grid so that all intersections of words are valid. Fill-in
crosswords may often have longer word length than regular crosswords to make
the crossword easier to solve and symmetry is often disregarded. Fitting
together several long words is easier than fitting together several short words
because there are fewer possibilities for how the long words intersect
together.
Cross-Numbers
A cross-number (also
known as a cross-figure) is the numerical analogy of a crossword, in which the
solutions to the clues are numbers instead of words. Clues are usually arithmetical
expressions, but can also be general knowledge clues to which the answer is a
number or year. There are also numerical fill-in crosswords.
The Daily
Mail Weekend magazine used to feature cross-numbers under the misnomer
Number Word. This kind of puzzle should not be confused with a different puzzle
that the Daily Mail refers to as Cross Number.
Acrostic
Puzzles
An acrostic is a type of
word puzzle, in eponymous acrostic form, that typically consists of two parts.
The first is a set of lettered clues, each of which has numbered blanks
representing the letters of the answer. The second part is a long series of
numbered blanks and spaces, representing a quotation or other text, into which
the answers for the clues fit. In most forms of the puzzle, the first letters
of each correct clue answer, read in order from clue A on down the list, will
spell out the author of the quote and the title of the work it is taken from;
this can be used as an additional solving aid.
Arroword
The arroword is a
variant of a crossword that does not have as many black squares as a true
crossword, but has arrows inside the grid, with clues preceding the arrows. It
has been called the most popular word puzzle in many European countries and is
often called the Scandinavian crossword, as it is believed to have originated
in Sweden.[5]
Crossword
Records
According to Guinness World Records, May
15, 2007, the most prolific crossword compiler is Roger Squires of Ironbridge,
Shropshire, UK. On May 14, 2007,
he published his 66,666th crossword,[24] equivalent to 2 million clues. He is
one of only four setters to have provided cryptic puzzles to The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The
Guardian, the Financial Times and
The Independent. He also holds the
record for the longest word ever used in a published crossword - the 58-letter
Welsh town, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, clued as
an anagram.
Enthusiasts have compiled a number of
record-setting achievements for the New
York Times crossword, the most prestigious American-style crossword.[25]
The lowest word count in a published
weekday-size 15x15 puzzle is the January 21, 2005 New York Times crossword by
Frank Longo, with just 52 words and was believed by Times crossword editor Will
Shortz to be the world record for this type of puzzle.
The fewest shaded squares in a 15x15
American crossword is 17 (leaving 208 white spaces), set by the July 27, 2012
Times crossword by Joe Krozel.[26]
The record for most crosswords published
in the New York Times is held by Manny Nosowsky, who has had 241 puzzles in
that outlet.
Crosswords
in Non-English Languages
From the origin in New York, crosswords have spread to many countries and languages. In languages other than
English, the status of diacritics varies according to the orthography of the
particular language, thus:
- in French, Spanish and Italian, accent marks and most other diacritical markings are ignored, except the tilde in Spanish: for instance, in French, the final E of answer ÊTRE can double as the final É of CONGÉ when written ETRE and CONGE; but in Spanish, N and Ñ are distinct letters.
- in German language crosswords, the umlauts ä, ö and ü are dissolved into ae, oe and ue and ß is dissolved into ss.
- in Dutch crosswords, the ij digraph is considered one letter, filling one square and the IJ and the Y are considered distinct. Rules may vary in other word games.
- in Spanish crosswords, the letters ch and ll fill two squares, although in some old crosswords (from prior to the 1996 spelling reform) they filled one square.
- in Czech and Slovak, diacritics are respected and ch, being considered one letter, occupies one square.
- in Irish crosswords, the accents on Á É Í Ó Ú are all respected, so (for example) the Í in SÍB cannot double as the I in SLIABH.
- in Romanian, diacritics are ignored.
- in Hungarian, diacritics are respected, with the exception of Ő and Ű - they are regarded similar to Ö and Ü, although the difference between the two pairs of letters is a distinctive feature in Hungarian.
- in Russian, diacritics are ignored: Ё is considered the same as Е and Й is considered the same as И.
- in Portuguese, diacritics are ignored with the exception of Ç. Therefore, A could be checked with à or Á.
Grid
Design, Clues & Conventions
- French-language crosswords are smaller than English-language ones and not necessarily square: there are usually 8–13 rows and columns, totaling 81–130 squares. They need not be symmetric and two-letter words are allowed, unlike in most English-language puzzles. Compilers strive to minimize use of shaded squares. A black-square usage of 10% is typical; Georges Perec compiled many 9×9 grids for Le Point with four or even three black squares.[27] Rather than numbering the individual clues, the rows and columns are numbered as on a chessboard. All clues for a given row or column are listed, against its number, as separate sentences.
- This is similar to the notation used in the aforementioned Daily Mail Blankout puzzles.
- In Italy, crosswords are usually oblong and larger than French ones, 13×21 being a common size. As in France, they usually are not symmetrical; two-letter words are allowed; and the number of shaded squares is minimized. Nouns (including surnames) and the infinitive or past participle of verbs are allowed, as are abbreviations; in larger crosswords, it is customary to put at the center of the grid phrases made of two to four words, or forenames and surnames. A variant of Italian crosswords does not use shaded squares: words are delimited by thickening the grid. Another variant starts with a blank grid: the solver must insert both the answers and the shaded squares and Across and Down clues are either ordered by row and column or not ordered at all.
- Particularly curious is the Japanese language crossword; because of the writing system, one syllable (typically katakana) is entered into each white cell of the grid rather than one letter, resulting in the typical solving grid seeming small in comparison to those of other languages. Any second Yōon character is treated as a full syllable and is rarely written with a smaller character. Even cipher crosswords have a Japanese equivalent, although pangrammaticity does not apply. Crosswords with kanji to fill in are also produced, but in far smaller number as it takes far more effort to construct one. Despite Japanese having three writing forms, hiragana, katakana and kanji, they are rarely mixed in a single crossword puzzle.
- In Poland, crosswords typically use British-style grids, but some do not have shaded cells. Shaded cells are often replaced by boxes with clues - such crosswords are called Swedish puzzles or Swedish-style crosswords. In a vast majority of Polish crosswords, nouns are the only allowed words.
- Modern Hebrew is normally written with only the consonants; vowels are either understood, or entered as diacritical marks. This can lead to ambiguities in the entry of some words and compilers generally specify that answers are to be entered in ktiv male (with some vowels) or ktiv haser (without vowels). Further, since Hebrew is written from right to left, but Roman numerals are used and written from left to right, there can be an ambiguity in the description of lengths of entries, particularly for multi-word phrases. Different compilers and publications use differing conventions for both of these issues.
- A. N. Prahlada Rao, based in Bangalore, has composed some 40,000 crossword puzzles in the language Kannada, including 7,500 crosswords based on films made in Kannada, with a total of 1200,000 (Twelve lakhs) clues.[28] A five volume set of his puzzles was released in February 2008.[29]
- Bengali is also well known for its crossword puzzles. Crosswords are published regularly in almost all the Bengali dailies and periodicals. The grid system is quite similar to the British style and two-letter words are usually not allowed.
- Swedish crosswords are mainly in the illustrated (photos or drawings), in-line clue style typical of the "Swedish-style grid" mentioned above. This tradition prospered already in the mid-1900s, in family magazines and sections of newspapers. Then the specialised magazines took off. Around the turn of the millennium, approximately half a dozen Swedish magazine editors produced specialized crossword magazines, totaling more than 20 titles, often published on a monthly basis. The oldest extant crossword magazine published in Swedish is Krysset[30] (from Bonnier), founded in 1957. Additionally, nearly all newspapers publish crosswords of some kind and at weekends often devote specialised sections in the paper to crosswords and similar type of pastime material. Both major evening dailies (Aftonbladet and Expressen) publish a weekly crossword supplement, named Kryss & Quiz and Korsord[31] respectively. Both are available as paid supplements on Mondays and Tuesdays, as part of the ongoing competition between the two newspapers.
American-style
Crossword Construction
In typical themed
American-style crosswords, the theme is created first, as a set of symmetric
long Across answers will be needed around which the grid can be created.[32][33]
Since the grid will typically have 180-degree rotational symmetry, the answers
will need to be also: thus a typical 15×15 square American puzzle might have
two 15-letter entries and two 13-letter entries that could be arranged
appropriately in the grid (e.g., one 15-letter entry in the third row and the
other symmetrically in the 13th row; one 13-letter entry starting in the first
square of the 6th row and the other ending in the last square of the 10th row).[33][34]
The theme must not only be funny and/or interesting, but also internally
consistent: in the sample "parts of a tree" theme shown above, FAMILY
TREE or CHARTER OAK would not be appropriate entries, as all the other entries
contain different parts of a tree, not the word "tree" itself or the
name of a kind of tree. SEED MONEY would also be unacceptable, as all the other
theme entries end in the part of a tree as opposed to beginning with it.[32]
Once a consistent,
appropriate theme has been chosen, a grid is designed around that theme,
following a set of basic principles:
Generally,
most American puzzles are 15×15 squares; if another size, they typically have
an odd number of rows and columns: e.g., 21×21 for "Sunday-size"
puzzles; GAMES Magazine will accept 17×17 puzzles, Simon & Schuster accepts
both 17×17 and 19×19 puzzles and the New York Times requires diagramless
puzzles to be 17×17.[35] The odd number of squares on a side ensures that
achieving symmetry is easier; with even-numbered puzzles the central block of
four squares makes constructing a symmetrical puzzle considerably more
difficult.[36]
The
black squares must be arranged so as to (1) ensure there are no two-letter
words; (2) form 180-degree rotational symmetry (so that if the grid is turned
upside-down, the pattern of black squares remains the same); (3) ensure that
every letter is checked (appears in both an Across and a Down word); (4) not
occupy too much of the puzzle (generally speaking, 16% of the puzzle is
considered a rough limit for the percentage of black squares); (5) ensure that
the entire puzzle has "all-over interlock"—that is, that the black
squares do not "cut" the puzzle into separate sections; and (6)
ensure that (generally) no non-theme entry is longer than any of the theme
entries. In addition, it is considered advisable to minimize the number of
so-called "cheater" black squares, i.e., black squares whose removal
would not change the word count of the puzzle but which make it easier to fill
by shortening the length of the words therein.[33][34][37]
The grid
is then filled with suitable words, keeping in mind that (1) no word can be
repeated in the grid (with the exception of prepositions or articles); (2)
profanity or graphic or "unpleasant" words are generally not allowed;
(3) obscurity is strongly discouraged in easy puzzles and should be kept to a
minimum in more difficult puzzles, where two obscure words should never be
allowed to cross (and, ideally, where the obscure word would be of interest to
most solvers—a genus of little-known water bugs would not be a good choice);
(4) uncommon abbreviations, variant foreign spellings should be avoided and the
use of "crosswordese" (those words that no longer appear in common
speech but that occur frequently in crosswords due to their favorable letter
combinations, e.g., the obscure Asian buffalo ANOA) should be minimized; (5) in
modern puzzles, pop figures and corporate and brand names are generally
considered acceptable; (6) no made-up words are permitted—there should be a
dictionary or other reference that can cite each entry, if asked.[33][37]
Modern constructors frequently (although
not always) use software to speed the task. Several programs are available, of
which the most widely accepted is Crossword Compiler.[32] These programs,
although they cannot create themes and cannot distinguish between
"good" fill (fun, interesting words vs. dull obscurity), do speed up
the process and will allow the constructor to realize if he or she has hit a
dead end.[38]
The website Cruciverb.com provides
numerous resources for constructors, including forums to discuss puzzles with
other constructors, construction advice from experienced constructors and
specifications from the major publishers on how to submit puzzles to them and
what their specific puzzle requirements are. Content available with a paid
subscription includes a database of words found in major published puzzles.
Crossword puzzle payments for standard
15×15 puzzles from the major outlets range from $50 (GAMES Magazine) to $200
(The New York Times) while payments for 21×21 puzzles range from $150 (Newsday)
to $1,000 (the New York Times).[39]
The compensation structure of crosswords
generally entails authors selling all rights to their puzzles upon publication
and as a result receiving no royalties from republication of their work in
books or other forms. This system has been criticized by American Values Club
crossword editor Ben Tausig, among others.[40]
Footnotes
2.
D. S. MacNutt
with A. Robins, Ximenes on the art of the crossword, Methuen & Co
Ltd, London (1966) p. 49.
10.
The Boston Globe, April 8, 1917, p. 43 contains a puzzle and a solution
to a previous week's puzzle.
11.
Report of the New
York Public Library for 1921;
published by The Library, 1922
12.
"Movie of a
Man Doing the Cross-Word Puzzle," by "Briggs," Morning
Oregonian, October 3, 1922, p. 14; also published in several other
newspapers
13.
"There Goes
My Crossword Puzzle, Get Up Please." The Boston Daily Globe,
October 1, 1923, p. 7.
14.
"Jottings
About Town." The New Yorker, February 25, 1925, p. 30.
15.
Frederick Lewis
Allen (1931). Only Yesterday. Harper and Row., p. 159 of 1964 Perennial Library paperback reprint
16.
"Topics of
the Times." The New York Times, November 17, 1924, p. 18
17.
"Condemns
Cross-Word Fad." The New York Times, December 23, 1924, p. 17
19.
Topics of the
Times: Sees Harm, Not Education" The New York Times, March 10,
1925, p. 20,
20.
"All About
the Insidious Game of Anagrams," The New York Times, December 29,
1929, p. BR3
21.
Richard H.
(1930), "The Lure of the Puzzle." The New York Times, February
4, 1930, p. 20
22.
Gilbert, Val (3
May 2004). "D-Day
crosswords are still a few clues short of a solution". Daily Telegraph.
23.
The Daily
Telegraph - 80 Years of Cryptic Crosswords, p. 44.
24.
(Pat-Ella) "Crossword
setter hits puzzling landmark", Richard
Savill, Daily Telegraph, May 15, 2007
33.
Rosen, Mel
(1995). Random
House Puzzlemaker's Handbook. New York:
Random House. ISBN 9780812925449.
34.
Kurzban, Stanley
A. (1981). The Compleat Cruciverbalist: Or How to Solve and Compose
Crossword Puzzles for Fun and Profit. Van Nostrand Reinhold. ISBN 978-0442257385.
36.
Gore, Molly (15
November 2007). "Math
professor and crossword constructor gives puzzle advice". The Santa Clara (Santa Clara, California).
38.
Holmes, Kristin
E. (29 April 2007). "A passion
to fit words together". Philadelphia
Inquirer (archived at crosswordtournament.com).
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