Puzzling how fanatical puzzlers used to be
by
Howard Richler
We have
just passed the centenary of the creation of the crossword puzzle.
For on December 21, 1913 the New York World
featured a
new type of word puzzle constructed by
journalist Arthur Wynne. Wynne's puzzle differed from today's
crosswords in that it was diamond shaped and contained no internal
black squares.
Wynne
recalled a puzzle from his childhood in Liverpool, England called
Magic Squares, in which a given group of words had to be arranged so
their letters would read the same way across and down. He designed a
larger and more complex grid, and provided a clue for each word. New
York World published Wynne's “word-cross
puzzle” as a “mental exercises” on the Fun Page. Before
settling on a rectangle shape, Wynne experimented with different
shapes, including a circle. The word-cross became known as a
cross-word, and as with many hyphenated words, the hyphen was
eventually dropped.
In
1921 Margaret Petherbridge Farrar took over editorship of this
newspaper's crossword. Among her innovations was the single number
clue and puzzles became regular in pattern with the words
interlocking instead of in several different blocks.
A
crossword craze began in 1923. Simon & Schuster published their
Crossword Puzzle Book, their very first publishing
venture. They printed 3600 copies and were told this was an exremely
high number that would lead to their bankruptcy. Within three months
sales exceeded 40,000 and within one year three volumes were produced
with total sales of 400,000.
During
the early 1920's other newspapers, such as Toronto's The Globe
on December 10, 1924, picked up the newly discovered pastime and
within a decade crossword puzzles were featured in almost all North
American newspapers. It was in this period that crosswords began to
assume their familiar form. Ten years after its rebirth in the USA,
it crossed the Atlantic.
The
first appearance of a crossword in a British publication was in
Pearson's Magazine in February 1922, and the first Times
crossword appeared on February 1,1930. British puzzles quickly
developed their own style, being considerably more difficult than the
American variety. In particular the cryptic crossword became
established and rapidly gained popularity.
The
New York Times was the
only American major daily newspaper to refuse to include such puzzles
but it soon relented. In 1924 its editor wrote: “All ages, both
sexes, highbrows and lowbrows, at all times and in all places, even
in restaurants and in subways, pore over the diagrams.” Eighteen
years later, the New York Times'
Sunday edition printed its first crossword, and in September 1950 the
puzzle became a daily feature as well.
Crossword
puzzlers, on the whole, are a staid, functional lot. Yet,
it was not always so. In the year 1924, Canadian
Forum
referred
to puzzledom as an “epidemic obsession'” and in the same year,
the London
Times
was even more scurillous in its labelling, crossword puzzles as a
“menace making devastating inroads on the working hours of every
rank of society.” In its
November 1924 edition, Canadian
Forum
featured an article entitled The
Psychology Of The Cross-Word Puzzle where
the author
charged the psychological world to explain the regressive behaviour
found in crossword puzzlers: “Psychology should at least attempt
some explanation of what may be regarded as the epidemic obsession of
the cross-word puzzle.” No call for outside help should have been
made for by our self-styled Jungian editorialist. He went on to
conclude, “it is obvious from the similarity of the cross-word
puzzle to the child`s letter blocks that it is primarily the
unconscious which is expressing itself in the cross-word puzzle
obsession.”
A legacy of the crossword madness was on display at the
New York Public Library in 1937 because frenzied puzzlers were
desecrating valued library tomes in an attempt to gain an edge over
competitors. There a prohibitive sign commanded in glaring block
letters: THE USE OF LIBRARY BOOKS IN CONNECTION WITH CONTESTS AND
PUZZLES IS PROHIBITED.
Helene Hovanec in Creative Cruciverbalists
recounts some stories found in US neswpapers in 1924-25 that
highlight puzzle mishugass that occurred at the time. Here are two
examples:
“Mrs. Mara Zaba of Chicago, complaining that she was a
'cross-word' widow, sued her husband for non-support. Mr. Zaba was so
engrossed in solving crosswords that he didn`t have time to work.
Judge Sabath ordered Zaba to limit himself to three puzzles a day and
devote the rest of his time to domestic duties.”
“Theodore Koerner of Brooklyn asked his wife for
help in solving a crossword. She begged off, claiming exhaustion.
Koerner shot her (superficially) and then shot himself (fatally).”
As we commemorate one hundred years of crossword
puzzles it might be wise to remember that lurking in the depths of
the next passive puzzler you spot lies a wordstruck maniac just
waiting to break out.
Crossword nut Howard Richler's latest book is How
Happy Became Homosexual and other mysterious semantic shifts.
