The History of Crosswords

Michael Macdonald-Cooper introduces us to the mysteries and history of the Crossword.

The crossword craze American crosswords British crosswords Cryptic crosswords Advanced, barred-grid crosswords Thematic crosswords

Word games of various sorts go back a very long way. We do not know at what point the gradual progress of literacy inspired people to make the mental leap from the utilitarian representation of speech by written characters to the conceptually different process of playing with the characters themselves to produce other effects. What is beyond doubt, however, is that word games, in the modern world of widespread literacy, are now inextricably woven into our use of language, artistically, recreationally and commercially.

Acronyms

The ubiquitous acronym so beloved of commercial organisations and pressure groups alike can be traced at least as far back as Christians of the first century AD. Members of early Christian communities used the symbol and the word for "fish" as a mutually intelligible means of identification, based on the fact that the five initial letters of the Greek words for 'Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour' spell out the word for fish, ICQUS.

Acrostics

Acrostics were used in ancient and mediaeval texts, often in order to incorporate a dedication or a special message. Ciphers and rumours of ciphers found their way into Shakespearean exegesis and the prophecies of Nostradamus. Anagrams featured in seventeenth-century accounts of the exploits of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, whose first name (with U written as V, as in Latin inscriptions) was seen as a version of Augustus.

The First Crossword

It was not until the early twentieth century, however, that the crossword puzzle as such made its first appearance. Arthur Wynne, a native of Liverpool working as a journalist in New York, published a lozenge-shaped grid whose squares were to contain answers to clues, with letters of answers running horizontally contributing to the formation of answers running vertically down the grid. This puzzle appeared on 21 December 1913, in a newspaper publication – the Fun supplement of New York World.

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