106 Fun Facts About Crosswords

The puzzle now called the first crossword appeared in a Sunday newspaper in 1913 under which name?

Word-Cross was the heading on that first puzzle, and only later were its two halves swapped round to give the name that stuck.

What is a person who constructs or solves crosswords called?

A cruciverbalist is, literally, a cross-worder: the term was built in mock Latin from crux, cross, and verbum, word, as a joking translation of 'crossword'.

What was the trade of Arthur Wynne, who devised the first crossword in 1913?

Journalist Arthur Wynne ran his puzzle in the New York World on 21 December 1913, and by the 1920s newspapers across America were printing their own.

The first crossword ran in 1913 in which part of a Sunday newspaper?

The Fun page was the paper's Sunday puzzle section, and FUN duly turns up as the first word across in that first grid.

Which cookie turns up in grids so often that it has been dubbed the official cookie of the crossword?

Oreo packs three vowels into four letters, so constructors lean on it constantly. In its early New York Times appearances it was clued only as a prefix meaning mountain, never as a cookie.

Which publishing pair's very first book, in 1924, was the first collection of crossword puzzles?

Simon and Schuster were so nervous about the untested format that they kept the firm's name off the book, issuing it under the alias Plaza Publishing Company. The idea had come from Richard Simon's puzzle-loving aunt.

Which British newspaper held out against the crossword craze until 1930, years after its rivals had given in?

The Times had sneered at the American craze in an editorial about a nation enslaved by puzzles, then printed its own first crossword in February 1930. The Sunday Express and Daily Telegraph had run them for years by then.

What did a 1924 New York Times editorial call the new crossword fad?

A sinful waste was its verdict on the utterly futile finding of words to fit a prearranged pattern, and it sniffed that solving was not a game at all. The paper then held out for years before printing a puzzle of its own.

Which event finally pushed The New York Times to launch its own crossword?

The attack on Pearl Harbor led the Sunday editor to urge the publisher to proceed with a puzzle, since readers would need something to fill bleak blackout hours. The first one ran two months later, in February 1942.

Who was The New York Times' first crossword editor, serving from 1942?

Margaret Farrar began as a secretary at the New York World, where one of her duties was keeping typos out of the puzzle. She proved so good at it that she ended up running it.

Which New York Times game, now a stablemate of its crossword, was bought from its creator in 2022?

Wordle was built by Josh Wardle, who said the paper's own games had played a big part in its origins. The Times paid a price in the low seven figures, while the other three were launched by the paper itself.

Will Shortz, NYT crossword editor from 1993, holds the only known degree in what field?

Enigmatology, the study of puzzles, was a major Shortz designed for himself through Indiana University's individualized program. He had sold his first puzzle to a magazine at 14.

Which sport does crossword editor Will Shortz play so keenly that he opened a club devoted to it?

Table tennis became a daily ritual for Shortz, who opened his own club in Pleasantville, New York. By early 2024 he had not missed a day's play since October 2012.

Which word game was called Criss-Cross Words before it got the name it has today?

Scrabble was Alfred Butts's Criss-Cross Words until a new owner renamed it. Butts set its tile counts by tallying how often each letter appeared on newspaper pages, The New York Times among them.

What is the standard size of a weekday New York Times crossword grid?

15 by 15 is the daily grid, and a themed puzzle normally fits no more than 78 answers into it. A themeless one is held to 72, so its answers have to run longer.

Which day's New York Times crossword is the easiest?

Monday is the gentlest, and the puzzles then get harder each day until Saturday. Solvers use the days as shorthand, so any easy puzzle gets called a Monday.

The giant Sunday New York Times crossword is not the week's hardest; it is pitched at about which day's level?

Thursday is the usual yardstick, though the Times itself says Wednesday or Thursday. The week's real brute is Saturday's puzzle, on a grid about half the size.

A question mark at the end of a crossword clue usually signals what?

A punning answer is on the way, because the mark warns that the clue should not be taken at face value. Easier puzzles add it as a courtesy, while harder ones often leave it off.

What does the abbreviation Var. in a clue tell the solver?

The answer is a variant spelling, a rarer form of a familiar word such as EMEER in place of EMIR. The tag is the constructor's admission that the usual spelling would not fit.

Which type of clue is usually the easiest in an American puzzle and a good place to start?

Fill-in-the-blank clues are the usual way in, because a familiar phrase with a gap all but completes itself. Blank Boleyn, for instance, can only be ANNE.

Turn most American crossword grids upside down and the black squares look the same, thanks to which property?

Rotational symmetry means the pattern of black squares survives a half turn. Asked why the rule existed, the first Times crossword editor reportedly replied: because it is prettier.

What do solvers call obscure words such as ETUI, ERNE and OLEO that turn up far more in puzzles than in life?

Crosswordese survives because short, vowel-heavy words rescue constructors from tight corners of the grid. Editors still treat too much of it as a flaw.

Which Grand Inquisitor's name did The Observer's pioneering cryptic setter borrow as a fitting alias for tormenting solvers?

Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain, lent his name to the poet Edward Powys Mathers, whose Observer puzzles began in 1926. His successor at the paper kept up the joke by signing as another inquisitor.

Which pen name, taken from a Spanish inquisitor, belonged to the Observer setter who wrote the rulebook of fair cryptic clueing?

Ximenes was the classics master Derrick Macnutt, who borrowed the name of a cardinal who once led the Spanish Inquisition. His rules of fair play are still known as Ximenean principles.

Which television detective was named after a bank chairman who kept beating his creator in crossword clue-writing contests?

Inspector Morse took his surname from Sir Jeremy Morse, the Lloyds Bank chairman who kept winning the Observer clue contests that novelist Colin Dexter also entered. Sergeant Lewis was named after another regular winner.

Afrit's rule for setters: you need not mean what you say, but you must what?

Say what you mean was the rule Alistair Ferguson Ritchie, who set as Afrit, laid down in his book Armchair Crosswords. A clue may mislead, but its wording must still lead logically to the answer.

Which weekly crossword, begun in 1930, has outlived the BBC magazine it is still named after?

The Listener crossword began in the BBC's weekly magazine in 1930. When the magazine closed in 1991 the puzzle moved to The Times, where it still runs on Saturdays under its old name and numbering.

MI5 questioned a Daily Telegraph crossword compiler after his answers included Utah, Omaha and Overlord, codewords for what?

The D-Day landings were weeks away when the words appeared, joined by Mulberry and Neptune. The compiler, headmaster Leonard Dawe, was cleared; a former pupil later said boys had picked the words up from soldiers camped nearby.

Some cryptologists for which wartime codebreaking centre were recruited after doing well in a crossword competition?

Bletchley Park gained recruits after the Daily Telegraph ran a contest to solve its crossword in under 12 minutes. Weeks later, the War Office quietly wrote to those who had done well.

Which Broadway composer is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords to Americans through puzzles in New York magazine in 1968-69?

Stephen Sondheim set the puzzles for about a year and gave up only when writing the musical Company left him no time. His games-filled home also helped inspire the thriller Sleuth.

The 1996 election-day New York Times puzzle worked with either the president's surname or which other name at 39-Across?

BOB DOLE fit because every crossing Down clue had two valid answers, such as BAT or CAT for a black Halloween animal. Editor Will Shortz has called it his all-time favorite crossword.

Which former US president is a well-known New York Times crossword fan who appeared in the documentary Wordplay?

Bill Clinton did more than solve them: a year after the 2006 film, he wrote the clues for an online New York Times crossword himself.

Which star played a crossword constructor in All About Steve, winning a Razzie for it a day before her Oscar?

Sandra Bullock collected her worst-actress Razzie in person, handing out DVDs of the film, the night before she won best actress for The Blind Side. Her character writes crosswords for a newspaper.

Which entrant topped the 2021 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament scoreboard?

A computer program called Dr.Fill, built by Matt Ginsberg, outscored every human solver that year. On its 2012 debut it came 141st, and everyone who beat it got an I Beat Dr.Fill button.

America's oldest crossword tournament has spent most of its life in which Connecticut city, a short train ride from Manhattan?

Stamford hosted the tournament from 1978 until it outgrew the Marriott and moved to Brooklyn in 2008. It came home in 2015 and stayed through 2026.

In a cryptic crossword clue, words like confused, crazy or cooked usually tell the solver to do what?

Rearrange some letters is the order, because any word hinting at disorder or change can flag an anagram. The letters to jumble are almost always sitting in the clue itself.

Which creator of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune devoted his final game show, launched weeks after his death in 2007, to crosswords?

Merv Griffin was still working on the show in his final weeks and never saw it air. Merv Griffin's Crosswords premiered in September 2007, a month after he died.

Three-letter compass points such as NNW are handy American grid filler; which of these is another genuine one?

WSW, west-southwest, is one of only eight such points, since the last two letters must be NE, SE, SW or NW.

A 1998 New York Times crossword carried a message from reader Bill Gottlieb; what did its answers do for him?

Proposed to his girlfriend, Emily, is what they did: the long answers included A MODEST PROPOSAL and WILL YOU MARRY ME, with BILLG sitting higher up in the same grid.

The strange-looking American crossword answer PSAND fills the blank in which familiar saying?

Mind your Ps and Qs supplies PS AND, run together because grids ignore spaces. American puzzles allow such slices of a longer phrase, clued with a blank to fill in.

Constructors nickname a crossword that has two equally correct solutions after which physicist?

Erwin Schrödinger imagined a cat that was alive and dead at once, and in these puzzles a square can hold either of two letters. Every clue crossing that square has to work both ways.

Which digit puzzle with a Japanese name began life as Cross Sums in an American puzzle magazine?

Kakuro is the name the Japanese publisher Nikoli gave Cross Sums after importing it from the United States. It shortens kasan kurosu, which joins the Japanese for addition to the Japanese pronunciation of cross.

The Sator Square, an ancient five-word Latin palindrome, was found scratched at which buried Roman city?

Pompeii yielded the oldest complete example, carved on a gymnasium column before an earthquake struck in AD 62. A find that early undercut the popular theory that the square began as a hidden Christian prayer.

During the crossword craze of the 1920s, which places complained that puzzle fans were crowding out their regulars?

Public libraries saw fans swarm the reference desk for dictionaries and encyclopedias, pushing aside readers and students.

The 1913 newspaper puzzle usually called the first crossword had no black squares and was shaped like which playing-card suit?

A diamond with a hollow centre held the answers, and no black squares kept the words apart. Its maker drew it up because he wanted something new for his paper's Christmas edition.

What came attached to every copy of the first crossword puzzle book when it went on sale in 1924?

A pencil came attached to every copy to sweeten the deal. The wary publishers printed only a small first run, then watched the book become an instant hit.

Which animated sitcom sent a character to a crossword tournament in 2008, with puzzle makers Will Shortz and Merl Reagle voicing themselves?

The Simpsons sent Lisa to the tournament, and the tie-in ran off screen too. Merl Reagle's real New York Times puzzle that same Sunday carried the hidden messages from the plot.

A classic one-word crossword clue reads Grateful, followed by a question mark; which answer fits it?

ASHES fits because the clue must be read as grate-full, and a fireplace grate might well be full of them. Read straight, the word points the wrong way, toward thanks.

The cryptic crossword clue Flower of London is not after a bloom at all; what is it really asking for?

A river is a flow-er, a thing that flows, so the answer is THAMES. Setters pull the same trick with banker, since a river has banks.

In 2013 the Guardian's 91-year-old star setter used one of his own cryptic crosswords to announce what?

His terminal cancer came out clue by clue: a note above the grid said the setter had 18 down, and 18 down solved to cancer. The Reverend John Graham said it seemed the natural thing to do.

Record-breaking crossword setter Roger Squires said clue-writing shared the aim of his earlier career, to entertain by misleading; what was it?

A magician and Magic Circle member, Squires left the stage in 1977 to work from home and raise his two young children. Guinness listed him as the world's most prolific crossword compiler.

Which French novelist, known for books built on word games, also set crosswords with as few as three black squares?

Georges Perec wrote the novel A Void without a single letter e, then a novella whose only vowel is e. Most French grids are about one tenth black squares, and he made a speciality of far fewer.

Where do the clues go in a Swedish-style arrow crossword?

Inside the grid is where they sit, in small clue boxes that take the place of black squares, with arrows showing which way each answer runs. With so little room, every clue has to be very short.

In a standard Japanese crossword, what goes into each white cell instead of a single letter?

A katakana syllable fills each cell, and even the small characters are written full size. Packing a whole syllable into every square is why Japanese grids look small beside English ones.

British puzzle magazines give which name to a crossword whose grid comes with almost no black squares or clue numbers?

Skeleton crosswords leave the solver to work out where the black squares go, helped by the grid's symmetry and a few starter squares. Americans know the same challenge as a diagramless.

The Observer's first cryptic crossword setter wrote Cain's Jawbone, a 1934 murder mystery whose 100 pages are printed how?

In the wrong order, so the reader must rearrange all 100 pages and then name the murderers and their victims. Two readers cracked it for a 1930s prize, and comedian John Finnemore did so again during the 2020 lockdown.

Will Shortz wrote the puzzle clues that Jim Carrey's villain leaves for the hero of which 1995 film?

Batman Forever needed riddles worthy of the Riddler, and they came from the man who had become New York Times crossword editor just two years earlier.

In which 2014 film does Alan Turing plant a difficult crossword in newspapers to recruit new codebreakers?

The Imitation Game has Cambridge graduate Joan Clarke, played by Keira Knightley, pass the newspaper test and join the all-male team.

The longest word ever used in a published crossword, a 58-letter place name, comes from which country?

Wales provided it: prolific setter Roger Squires fitted the village name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch into a puzzle and clued it as one long anagram.

Which longest-recurring Disney character debuted as a villain in 1925, demanding a girl's crossword puzzle?

Bootleg Pete, now plain Pete, plays a collector of rare crosswords in Alice Solves the Puzzle, a short also remembered as one of the first cartoons to be heavily censored.

SQUARE ROOT, TABLE LEAF and BRAIN STEM were long answers in a 2005 New York Times crossword; what linked them?

Parts of a tree ended every theme answer: Sarah Keller's puzzle also held WARDROBE TRUNK and BANK BRANCH, and CHARTER OAK would have broken the pattern by naming a whole tree.

Whose death did a 2011 New York Times crossword mark with entries including PIXAR and CREATIVE GENIUS?

Steve Jobs had died only two days before the tribute ran, and its other theme entries included MACINTOSH and APPLE.

The clue Nice summer wants ETE, not a pleasant season, because solvers must read Nice as what?

A city in France is the trick: été is French for summer, and because every clue opens with a capital letter, solvers cannot tell the place from the adjective.

Which figure from the O. J. Simpson trial saw his surname boom as a crossword answer in the late 1990s?

Lance Ito, the trial judge, gave setters a fresh way to clue ITO, which had earlier pointed to dancer Michio Ito or actor Robert Ito.

In an American crossword, the clue Italia's capital, rather than Italy's capital, asks for which answer?

ROMA is right because a foreign word in a clue calls for a foreign answer: Italia wants the Italian name, while Italy would get plain ROME.

The newspaper that printed the first crossword in 1913 had been bought in 1883 by which famous publisher?

Joseph Pulitzer bought the paper in 1883 and began an aggressive drive for readers; he died in 1911, so his family owned it when the puzzle first ran.

Which radio network made Will Shortz its on-air puzzle master when Weekend Edition Sunday launched in 1987?

NPR gave him the Sunday Puzzle, a cooperative game played on air between the programme's host and a member of its audience.

Will Shortz earned which professional qualification from the University of Virginia in 1977 but never practised?

A law degree was as far as it went: he never sat the bar exam, choosing a career at puzzle magazines instead.

Which late-night comedian appears among the celebrity solvers in the 2006 crossword documentary Wordplay?

Jon Stewart shares the screen with filmmaker Ken Burns, pitcher Mike Mussina and the Indigo Girls, all devoted fans of the daily puzzle.

Which Mean Girls actress began starring in Hallmark's Crossword Mysteries films in 2019?

Lacey Chabert, who was Gretchen Wieners in the 2004 comedy, led a run of whodunnits that opened with A Puzzle to Die For.

Which Great Lake, sharing its name with a Pennsylvania city, is a favourite short answer of American crossword makers?

Erie packs three vowels into four letters, exactly the kind of short, vowel-heavy word that gets a constructor out of a tight corner.

Which pirate, Captain Hook's assistant in Peter Pan, is a regular answer in American crossword grids?

Smee keeps turning up because short names built from common letters make handy filler, a club that also includes Iago from Othello and Ilsa from Casablanca.

Which daily New York Times puzzle, launched in 2014 with Joel Fagliano as its writer, usually uses a five-by-five grid?

The Mini arrived as the paper set up its whole games section in 2014, and it is pitched to be far easier than the full-size daily puzzle.

Which King of Queens star hosted People Puzzler, a game show built on a celebrity magazine's crosswords?

Leah Remini fronted the show on Game Show Network from 2021 to 2023 and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination as its host.

Which handheld console got The New York Times Crosswords, a 2007 game holding 1,000 of the paper's puzzles?

Nintendo DS owners wrote each letter on the touch screen with the stylus, and handwriting recognition turned the scrawl into neat capitals.

Which answer does the American crossword clue Right on the map call for?

EAST is right in the literal sense, the side of the map it sits on; setters also clue directions through things that point, such as a weather vane or a windsock.

The crossword clue Half a dance can be answered by CAN, from cancan, or by which other three letters?

CHA is half of cha-cha, just as CAN is half of cancan; indirect clues like this one have to be read literally rather than as a description.

In New York Times style, a clue in square brackets asks for a sound or reaction; which answer fits It's cold?

BRR is the shiver itself, which is what the brackets ask for; the same device gives PHEW for the relief of finally arriving and SHRUG for a wordless why.

In many British crosswords, what does a note such as (3,5) printed after a clue tell the solver?

Each word's length is what the numbers give, so (3,5) means three letters and then five; most American puzzles leave solvers to work that out alone.

Which New York Giants slugger of the 1930s is a crossword regular thanks to his very short surname?

Mel Ott hit 511 home runs for the Giants, yet many solvers meet him only as three convenient letters, two of them the same.

Which ambient music pioneer and record producer has a three-letter surname that crossword makers use constantly?

Brian Eno, a head producer on U2 albums such as Achtung Baby, offers two vowels around a single consonant, a pattern that slots in almost anywhere.

Which dog from the Thin Man films lives on as a stock crossword answer long after its 1930s fame?

Asta belonged to the detectives Nick and Nora Charles, and the name survives in grids through clues that simply point back to that film series.

The Guardian crossword setter known as Araucaria took his pen name from the Latin name of which conifer?

Monkey puzzle is Araucaria araucana, and he reused the joke at the Financial Times as Cinephile, an anagram of the plant's other name, Chile pine.

Arthur Wynne, who devised the first crossword, played which instrument in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra?

Violin kept him busy in Pittsburgh, where he settled for a time after emigrating to the United States at the age of 19.

Before Across and Down became standard, which pair of headings did early crossword clue lists carry?

Horizontal and Vertical were the labels the first puzzle editors used, as in 1 Horizontal; the shorter pair took over later in newspaper use.

In the vast majority of Polish crosswords, every answer must be which part of speech?

Nouns are the only words allowed in most Polish puzzles, which otherwise borrow the British style of grid and sometimes do without shaded cells altogether.

In Dutch crosswords, which pair of letters is written together in a single square because it counts as one letter?

IJ fills one square in Dutch puzzles and is kept distinct from Y, while Czech and Slovak setters give the same one-square treatment to CH.

What do New York Times solvers call a puzzle in which some squares must hold several letters or a symbol?

A rebus once asked solvers to squeeze the letters PH into single squares, in a 2012 puzzle themed on the scale that measures acids and bases.

English-language cipher crosswords are nearly always built with which property, a help when hunting for Q and U?

Every letter is used, making the finished grid a pangram, so solvers know that Q, U and the other rarities must be hiding somewhere among the 26 numbers.

What do American solvers call the entry that explains a themed crossword's link, often clued as a hint to others?

A revealer might be BOY in a puzzle whose long answers start with PAPER, BALL and WATER, the moment a solver sees what was going on all along.

The first known crossnumber puzzle ran in 1926 in which London magazine, famous for publishing Sherlock Holmes?

The Strand printed it as the work of Henry Dudeney, an English mathematician and puzzle author who swapped a crossword's words for numbers.

Leonard Dawe, the Daily Telegraph crossword compiler whose 1944 answers alarmed MI5, held which day job?

Headmaster of a school evacuated to Surrey, he was cleared after questioning; a former pupil said decades later that he had slipped overheard army words into the grids.

Which dictionary, known for dialect words and wryly humorous definitions, is widely used by British crossword setters?

Chambers carries many more dialectal, archaic and eccentric words than its rivals, exactly the corners of English where setters like to hide an answer.

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament outgrew its first home in 2008 and moved to which New York borough?

Brooklyn hosted the contest at a larger Marriott for seven years, until the event went back to its original home in 2015.

Will Shortz founded which international contest in 1992, organising its first edition in New York City?

World Puzzle Championship rounds use pure-logic problems that work in any language, because an earlier crossword marathon had let every nation solve in its own tongue.

What was surprising about Adrian Bell, the farmer who set a London broadsheet's first crossword in 1930?

He had never solved one, yet his father put his name to the editor when the paper began losing readers to a rival that already ran a daily puzzle.

From 2015 The Wall Street Journal's Friday crossword hid a contest puzzle; what did one random correct solver win?

A mug bearing the paper's initials was the prize for cracking the meta, a second puzzle concealed in the completed crossword.

Which word puzzle, a cousin of the crossword, did schoolteacher Elizabeth Kingsley invent in 1933?

Double-Crostic solvers answer clues, then move each letter into a second grid where a quotation appears, while the first letters spell out its author and title.

Which former Latin teacher edited the New York Times crossword from 1977 until his death in 1993?

Eugene Maleska ran the puzzle with a schoolmaster's sternness and became known for famously mean rejection letters to hopeful constructors.

Which Massachusetts town gave crossword solvers a slang word for an unguessable square where two obscure names cross?

Natick entered the jargon in 2008, when the blogger who writes as Rex Parker coined it for a square that leaves solvers with nothing but a guess.

What do crossword constructors call black squares that make a grid easier to fill without changing its word count?

Cheaters shorten the answers beside them, which makes the grid easier to complete, so constructors are advised to keep them to a minimum.

Which American magazine ran a monthly cryptic crossword by the married team Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon from 1977?

The Atlantic published 370 of their puzzles before the pair moved to The Wall Street Journal in 2010 with a cryptic slyly titled Relocation.

The first crossword book, in 1924, was published after a suggestion from which relative of one of its publishers?

His aunt, a keen solver, wanted a book of newspaper crosswords and found none existed; the firm doubted it would sell and printed only a small first run.

Which British newspaper was first to print a crossword, an adapted Arthur Wynne puzzle, in November 1924?

Sunday Express readers got there first among the newspapers, though a British monthly, Pearson's, had already run a crossword in February 1922.

Which goose, the official state bird of Hawaii, owes its place in American crosswords to a short, repetitive name?

Nene is named for the bird's soft call, and with only two different letters it slips into corners where few other species would fit.

Will Shortz was raised in Crawfordsville, Indiana, on a farm that bred which animals?

Arabian horses surrounded him as a boy, yet he chose puzzles, starting at Penny Press and then spending 15 years at Games magazine.