Have you ever played crossword? It's a popular form of word puzzle. The player is given clues* and the number of letters and then fills in a grid of boxes with the right words.
The history of word puzzles might start from the ancient Rome. Today, many newspapers have a daily or weekly crossword. People also buy crossword books. Yet, the first published crossword puzzle was created by Arthur Wynne. Wynne was from: Liverpool in the UK but he lived and worked for a newspaper called New York World. He wrote the first crossword puzzle for the "fun" section of the newspaper on December 21, 1913. Readers loved the puzzle and it became a weekly part of the newspaper. Then other newspapers also began publishing crossword puzzles and they became very popular in the USA.
The very first crossword puzzle didn't look much like the crosswords today. It was shaped like a diamond* and it didn't have any black squares. The squares were numbered and the clues were below the puzzle. It was called a "Word-Cross puzzle".
In the UK, the first crossword was published in 1922. It came out in the page of the London newspaper, The Times in 1930. The Times became famous for its "Cryptic crossword" - a very difficult crossword. To solve a cryptic puzzle, you have to find out the clue itself as well as the meaning, but they are very satisfying.
The crossword puzzles were at first created by hand. Only in 1997 the first computer software program that created crossword puzzles was developed.
Now the New York World is no longer around, but the crossword puzzle along with its popularity still continues.
