Tag Archives: Margaret Farrar

The Curious Case of Richard Simon’s Aunt, Hedwig

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Back in November, I wrote about how women have shaped the world of puzzles, both in the past and in the present.

One of the first women I mentioned was Richard Simon’s aunt. According to the lore of Simon & Schuster, she was the one who inspired Simon to publish a limited release book — the first crossword puzzle book — that launched their publishing empire.

While I was writing that post, I spent a little time researching, and I never came across her actual name. Everywhere I looked, it was simply Richard Simon’s aunt.

And that question festered in my brain for a while.

So, one day, I reached out to Simon & Schuster directly, asking for more information on Simon’s influential aunt. I heard back from Hannah Brattesani, their backlist manager, who not only volunteered to comb through the various company histories, but also suggested a book for my research (Turning the Pages by Peter Schwed).

While Hannah investigated from the S&S side of things, I decided to pursue what was publicly available about the Simon family tree. Perhaps I could look up his aunt directly and find a name that way.

I found that Richard L. Simon was the son of Leo Leopold Simon and Anna Simon (nee Mayer). Leo apparently only had brothers, while Anna’s only sister, Julia, died young.

Okay, that was a dead-end. Ah! But what about women who married into the family?

Anna’s brother Max Reinhard Meyer married a woman named Harriet and Leo’s brother Alfred Leopold Simon married a woman named Hedwig.

So we have two possibilities, but nothing concrete tying either of them to crosswords or S&S’s early days.

I heard back from Hannah, who unfortunately came up empty while searching the S&S archives. The closest we got was a reference from a book celebrating S&S’s 75th anniversary, mentioning “Mr. Simon’s strong-willed aunt.”

Sadly, not an actual picture of Richard Simon’s aunt…

Before I continue, I want to take a moment to ponder all the different permutations of the Richard Simon’s aunt story. For a casual anecdote that adds charm to a business’s first success story, there are a surprising number of variations.

In Turning the Pages and The Centenary of the Crossword, the story goes that Dick Simon had been asked by his aunt for a little help with a crossword puzzle to which she had become addicted. She considered there should be a book of these published.

In an article in Pressreader, she asked him where she could buy a book of crosswords like the ones in her favorite newspaper.

In What’s Gnu?: A History of the Crossword Puzzle by Michelle Arnot, she wants a collection of crossword puzzles for her daughter, an avid fan of the weekly puzzle in The World. In The Crossword Century and Thinking Inside the Box, Simon goes to dinner with his aunt, whose niece was addicted to crosswords.

So the only common threads are Simon, his aunt, and crosswords. Sometimes it’s for her (described as “puzzle mad” or, as we’ve already seen, “strong-willed”), or her daughter, or her niece, or a friend. Sometimes he notices her solving crosswords, sometimes she tells him. Sometimes it’s at her house, or over tea, or at dinner.

Sure, lots of anecdotes evolve over the decades. Any story from your family probably has a number of variations, depending on who tells the tale.

But it’s fascinating that such a fundamental moment in S&S’s history doesn’t really have an official version as part of the narrative.

So, we have Richard Simon, his aunt, and crosswords. Those were the common threads.

And it was the third one in that list that finally led me to her name. Not crosswords per se, but crossword history.

There are several marvelous books about the history of crosswords — I’ll post a list of my sources at the bottom of today’s post — and wouldn’t you know it, several of them include a name for Simon’s aunt!

Well, not a name. A nickname.

Wixie.

Yes, it’s somehow so brilliantly fitting that the woman who launched crossword publishing (for herself, a daughter, a niece, whomever) would have a whimsical nickname like that.

Aunt Wixie.

As it turns out, this nickname was sort of an open secret in the annals of crossword history and I’d managed to miss it in my previous searches across the internet. My grand mystery would have been solved much faster if I’d simply asked some of my fellow puzzlers and puzzle historians.

But I wasn’t disappointed to learn that I was late to the table. On the contrary, I was excited to add “Wixie” to the search parameters and see what I came up with.

A few more online sources were revealed, but sadly, not much else about Aunt Wixie herself.

Now, sharp-eyed readers, you’ve probably come to the same conclusion I did at this point.

Thinking back to what I’d learned about the Simon family tree, I had two possible aunts who had married into the family who could be our crossword-loving inspiration.

One was Harriet and one was Hedwig.

It seems like a natural conclusion that Aunt Wixie and Aunt Hedwig would be one and the same. But none of the sources, paper or digital, ever mentioned her real name.

I could’ve called it here, and written my blog post, and gone on my merry way.

But I wanted that last piece of puzzle that I could definitively point to and say, this, this is her.

In all those Google Books links and online articles, there was one source I couldn’t view publicly, because it was behind a paywall. Naturally, it was also the oldest source I could find online that came up using “Wixie” as a keyword: an issue of Publisher’s Weekly from 1954.

And I could read it… for a fee.

You may find it funny that I balked at spending twenty bucks for access to an article. But I did. I mean, none of the other sources told me more than her nickname and some variation on the crossword book creation myth. Would this one be any different?

As it turns out, yes, yes it would.

From the writeup in Publisher’s Weekly:

Among the devotees of the World’s crosswords was a New York Lady, Mrs. Alfred L. Simon. She had a nephew named Richard L. Simon to whom she was known as Aunt Wixie.

It is so perfectly typical that the smoking gun in my search for Richard Simon’s aunt’s name STILL doesn’t directly mention her by name, using her husband’s name instead. What an insanely fitting denouement.

Nonetheless, I finally had the connective tissue to tie the whole story together. From my deep dive into the Simon family tree, I knew that Mrs. Alfred L. Simon was none other than Hedwig Simon (nee Meier), our elusive Aunt Wixie.

So what do we know about Hedwig?

Sadly, very little. She was born in Frankfurt Am Main, Regierungsbezirk Darmstadt, HE, Germany on February 27, 1868. She had two children, Robert and Helen (hopefully a puzzle lover like her mother, depending on the story), and she died in May 26, 1932 in Manhattan.

That’s it. Several Hedwig Simons come up when you search the name, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything else I could verify was truly about Aunt Wixie.

Date of birth. Names of her children. Date of death. That’s all we know.

Oh, we actually do know one other thing.

We know that she, in some way, influenced the creation of the very first crossword puzzle book, helping to launch a literary dynasty that lasts to this very day.

But did she though?

It turns out… there’s an asterisk on the historical record that’s worth mentioning.

There is a chance that this entire story is apocryphal, and the influential hand of Aunt Wixie in Simon & Schuster’s earliest days was not as influential as the story makes it seem.

Michelle Arnot reported in her book that Margaret Farrar, first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times, had her doubts about Aunt Wixie’s role in the creation of S&S’s first crossword book.

In the foreword to Eugene T. Maleska’s 1984 book Across and Down: The Crossword Puzzle World, Farrar herself wrote:

There had never been a book of crosswords and Dick Simon’s aunt had suggested one. (Dick later admitted to me that this was all a joke, even unto the framed memo up on the office wall noting this earth-shaking idea.)

Could Aunt Wixie’s role in the history of crosswords simply be Richard Simon’s invention to help sell crossword books and add some whimsy and down-home family charm to Simon & Schuster’s first of many success story?

Margaret Farrar seemed to think so, and she was one of the most respected names in puzzles.

If this IS the case, Simon seemed to go out of his way to sell the story. He had a framed memo on his wall, as Farrar mentioned. He had a presentation copy of the first crossword puzzle book inscribed by both himself and Max Schuster to Aunt Wixie (the note pictured above), which was returned to Richard Simon upon her death, and which now resides in Will Shortz’s private collection.

Will’s collection also includes a copy of 1925’s Celebrities’ Cross Word Puzzle Book, a collection by S&S featuring puzzles created by (you guessed it) celebrities. It’s a leatherbound presentation copy specially printed for “Aunt Wixie.”

By the end of 1924, S&S already had four bestselling crossword compilations on the shelves. By the time The Celebrities’ Cross Word Puzzle Book was published in 1925, would Simon still have bothered with perpetuating the Aunt Wixie story, given the runaway success of S&S’s crossword puzzle books?

It seems a tad unnecessary.

The many variations on how Aunt Wixie, Simon, and crosswords influenced that first puzzle book could mean the story was made up, taking on a life of its own as it was shared anecdotally. Or it could mean that it’s true, as many stories from a hundred years ago have variations from being shared over and over again, retold many times. It’s hard to say either way.

That first book sparked a long, successful series…

I choose to believe that Hedwig Simon was in fact the impetus behind that first book. Maybe it’s naive to want her to be a true crossword enthusiast (or the mother of one, or the aunt of one), and not simply one more corporate invention to sell something to someone.

But I’m okay with that.

I’m happy to have spent this time and energy trying to unearth her name and learn a bit more about her, and I’m hoping that I might have the opportunity in the future to continue learning about her.

And I’m happy that this post, in some small way, might bend search algorithms and lead more people to associate the name Hedwig Simon with Simon & Schuster’s successes.

Narratively, I probably shot myself in the foot a little by putting her name in the title of the blog post. But this entire endeavor has been about learning more about her, learning her name, and it would be the height of selfishness to bury it in hundreds of words of text just for a ta-da moment.

So, in closing, let me just say, thanks Aunt Wixie, and it was nice to meet you, albeit very briefly, Hedwig.

My sincere thanks to Hannah Brattesani of Simon & Schuster, Rebecca Rego Barry of finebooksmagazine.com, and especially Ben Zimmer, who provided several key sources and links (and confirmed that the Publisher’s Weekly was the earliest source on the subject).

Sources:

-Turning the Pages: An Insider’s Story of Simon & Schuster 1924-1984 by Peter Schwed
-What’s Gnu?: A History of the Crossword Puzzle by Michelle Arnot
-The Centenary of the Crossword by John Halpern
-The Crossword Century by Alan Connor
-Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them by Adrienne Raphel
-Publishers Weekly (April 17, 1954, Volume 165, Issue 16)

What’s a Shortz Number?

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While I was researching Salomon Numbers for last week’s post, I discovered another crossword-centric number system with an S-name attached.

The Shortz Number.

Actually, I found several of them.

Allow me to elucidate.

XWordInfo lists a constructor’s Shortz Number as a reflection of when that constructor was first published in a daily puzzle during the Shortz Era of The New York Times crossword.

For instance, Jacob Reed debuts in today’s puzzle, and his Shortz Number is 1373.

Peter Gordon is 1. Merl Reagle is 26. Bernice Gordon is 77. Matt Gaffney is 97. Nancy Salomon is 143. Patrick Berry is 257. Deb Amlen is 378. Doug Peterson is 431. Patti Varol is 1000.

It’s an incredible insight into an ever-evolving roster of constructors.

According to a cursory Google Search, this seems to be the most legitimate definition of a Shortz Number.

But there are others.

The second and most specious definition seems to be a Shortzian take on the Salomon Number, connecting constructors to Shortz through a Kevin Bacon-like system of collaborations.

I only found a few references to this interpretation, so it seems more like a coincidence than actual cultural permeation.

But that still leaves one more version of a Shortz Number, and it’s my favorite one.

This version is actually referenced on Wikipedia under Humorous Units of Measurement and apparently originated as a Reddit post.

But in this instance, a Shortz is a unit of measurement for fame. More specifically, it’s the number of times a person’s name has appeared in The New York Times crossword as either a clue or a solution.

The brief post then goes on to state that Shortz himself is 1 Shortz famous. (I was unable to verify this through XWordInfo, either through SHORTZ, WILLSHORTZ, or WILL as grid entries.)

But as someone who enjoys weird statistics, I was definitely intrigued by this one. What’s the Shortz Number for common crosswordese and frequent fill?

I mean, RIPTORN only has a 6, but that’s an impressive number of times to get your first AND last name in a crossword.

So let’s dig in.

First things first, I’m jettisoning the clue aspect of the definition. Let’s stick to grid entries.

I’m also doing my best to eliminate shared names or ones with multiple definitions. ETTA has 241 uses in the Shortz Era, but I don’t want to parse between James and Jones. Same for ELLA (249), ANA (342), and ALOU (150).

Second, let’s stick to real people. It’s cool that SMEE has 114, ODIE 145, and ASTA a staggering 183. But the Bacon, Erdos, and Salomon Numbers rely on real people, so our Shortz Number will too.

So allow me to present the people with the 8 highest Shortz Numbers I could find:

#8 ENYA – 149
#7 ALDA – 152
#6 UMA – 162
#5 OTT – 188
#4 ONO – 196 (minus a half-dozen or so fish references)
#3 ESAU – 226 (hard to stat out other biblical figures like Adam, Eve, Enos, because of other uses)
#2 ASHE – 264

and, as you might expect…

#1 ENO – 268!

It’s certainly a close race, and one that could easily change in the future!

Let’s add one more wrinkle before we go.

Because it’s interesting to track all the Shortz Era uses… but there are decades of puzzles before that, and XWordInfo has stats on them too.

So do the rankings change when you factor those puzzles in?

Absolutely.

Let’s call these Farrar Numbers and see how things shake out.

I mentioned ETTA earlier. The pre-Shortz puzzles cause their Farrar Number to be more than double, vaulting up to 516. Similarly, ELLA leaps to 688 and ANA to 758!

Some of our fictional friends also prosper, with SMEE moving from 114 to 332 and ASTA rocketing from 183 to 533! But ODIE only adds a handful more, moving from 145 to 156.

So how did our top 8 do?

ENYA (149) stayed in the exact same place. There were NO pre-Shortzian references.

UMA (167) drops from 6th to 7th, only gaining 5 more references. She swaps places with ALDA (270), who adds a lot of references (discounting the hundred or so mentioning his father or opera star Frances Alda).

Sadly, ENO (280) plummets from the #1 spot all the way to 5th, only adding another dozen or so references to make his Farrar Number.

ONO (390) stays in 4th despite nearly doubling the number of references, while OTT (432) leapfrogs over ONO, going from 5th to 3rd with an impressive pre-Shortzian showing.

ASHE (560) stays in 2nd despite more than doubling his references (and obviously disappearing from the pre-Shortzian rankings in the early 1960s).

This means ESAU (609) goes from 3rd to 1st in the Farrar Number rankings!

So, whether you prefer your Shortz Number to be chronological, Baconian, or grid-centric, you’ve got plenty of options.

But personally, I think the Farrar Number is gonna take the world by storm!

Okay… maybe not. But it’s certainly fun to think about.

Happy puzzling, everyone!

Women of Letters (and Squares and Boxes and Clues and…)

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Puzzles bring joy to so many of us. They’re an escape, a challenge, a satisfying little test of our wits, our dedication, our creativity, and our flexibility of thought.

In uncertain times, in times of trouble, people often turn to puzzles. Puzzles were a refuge for many during lockdown when COVID hung over our heads. And now, when so much seems uncertain, if not downright unstable, people will no doubt turn to puzzles again.

That’s not to say that puzzle solving is a mere flight of fancy, a desperate bit of escapism, a Hail Mary avoidance of difficult circumstances, hard questions, and treacherous times to come. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If you turn to puzzles now, you’ll see a road map that proves things can get better.

Because, like it or not, misogyny once dominated the world of puzzles. It was baked into crosswords from the very beginning.

Yes, Arthur Wynne created the template for crosswords. Simon & Schuster are credited with publishing the first crossword puzzle book, as well as all the bestselling puzzle books that followed, serving as the foundation that helped build their brand.

But it was women who made crosswords into something more.

Women like Richard Simon’s aunt Wixie. She insisted Simon look into publishing a limited release crossword book. (UPDATE: I originally wrote that none of the stories mentioned her name, but I later found some that included her nickname, Wixie. I later discovered her actual name is Hedwig Simon.)

Women like Margaret Farrar. While serving as “an unofficial editor of the crossword-puzzle section,” she prevented errors and helped establish some of the baselines that still stand in crosswords today.

Women like Ruth Hale. Ruth was the founding president of the Amateur Cross Word Puzzle League of America, an organization that set crossword standards like limiting black squares and symmetrical grids, building off of Farrar’s work.

Women like Nancy Schuster. Schuster (no relation to the aforementioned publisher) not only ran Dell Crosswords but was the first winner of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Women like Helen Haven. In the 1920s, Haven was the organizer of the first competitive crossword-solving contest and served as the puzzle editor for The New York Herald-Tribune.

As pointed out by Anna Shechtman in her book The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, between 1913 and the 1960s, most crosswords were created by women.

Puzzles were literally women’s work! With all the connotations that phrase invites.

And crosswords were derided as a frivolous pastime because of it. Not only because women made crosswords, but because crosswords were predominantly solved by women.

The New York Times called the crossword “a primitive form of mental exercise” and female solvers were blamed for neglecting their families and wifely duties because of their “utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex.”

Funny how their opinions changed just in time to profit on crosswords in the 1940s.

Much like the Beatles — who were dismissed as nothing more than a glorified boy band when thousands of women cheered at their shows, only for them to be recognized as a once-in-a-generation group of talents when men started paying attention — crosswords became “respectable” only when men took interest and took over.

The percentage of female constructors published in The New York Times went down during the Will Shortz era, as compared to the Will Weng and Eugene Maleska eras.

And like it or not, but “the average solver” concept — a problem I discussed years ago — is still using a white male yardstick for comparisons, to the detrimental of solving and constructing.

In a wonderful blog post on the subject of women in puzzles, the author of the piece opens with the line “I’ve always associated crossword puzzles with men.”

And I realized how lucky I was to NOT have that association. In fact, I don’t think I would be a puzzly guy without the women in my life.

My mother (the first female store manager in A&P history) still solves crosswords and jigsaw puzzles to this day, and encouraged my interest in puzzles in the first place. My oldest sister (a teacher) introduced me to wordplay. My older sister spent hours playing puzzle video games like Dr. Mario with me. My younger sister is not just a master jigsaw puzzle solver, but a fiend at trivia nights and escape rooms, forever challenging me to match her flow.

I was trained in crossword puzzle editing and construction by Penny Press’s crossword guru Eileen Saunders, and still lean on her creativity and wisdom every day (and marvel at her blistering speed and efficiency).

I was shepherded through the world of variety puzzles by Los Angeles Times crossword editor and puzzle badass Patti Varol. (Though it was probably more like dragging my deadweight body through molasses than “shepherding” if I’m being honest.)

And that’s not counting the undeniable and indispensable influence of Amy Roth (a shining light at Penny Press), Chris Begley, and so many other female voices that make Penny Press one of the best outlets for puzzles in the world.

I love puzzles because of those women. I have made a career in puzzles because of those women. I am better at puzzles because of those women.

The puzzle world is better because of women. It will continue to advance and innovate and thrive because of women.

How do I know this? Because women are doing incredible things in puzzles RIGHT NOW.

A small sampling of the women making puzzles better. Wyna Liu, Amanda Rafkin, Soleil Saint-Cyr, Tracy Bennett. Illustrations by Ben Kirchner.

Look at The New York Times. Tracy Bennett, Wyna Liu, and Christina Iverson are delivering great daily puzzles like Connections, Strands, and Mini Crosswords not just consistently, but brilliantly.

The aforementioned Patti Varol is absolutely crushing it at The Los Angeles Times crossword. With Katie Hale and Angela Kinsella Olsen on Patti’s team, every month since mid-April 2022 has had a minimum of 50% women constructors and often exceeds that, all while delivering topnotch puzzles.

The New Yorker, USA Today, The Slate Crossword? Liz Maynes-Aminzade, Amanda Rafkin, Quiara Vasquez. Brooke Husic runs PuzzMo (where Rachel Fabi constructed my favorite puzzle of the year!) and Amy Reynaldo co-edits Crosswords With Friends.

Rebecca Goldstein just won the Orca for constructor of the year. Smarter people than me have called Stella Zawistowski a crossword boss in every sense of the word. Ada Nicolle won the 2024 Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament.

The impact of projects like Women of Letters and The Inkubator weren’t just the tip of the iceberg, they were the tip of the spear. A spear aimed directly at the heart of outdated notions of who makes crosswords and who solves them, dismantling the idea of some mythical “average solver” that has never truly represented the crossword audience.

As constructors, editors, and solvers, women in the past shaped puzzles as we know them. And women in the present are redefining puzzles. Not just in terms of representation (both as grid answers and creators behind the scenes), but in terms of acknowledgment, respect, and appreciation.

As for women of the future? I, for one, can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.

(And thank you to several of the women mentioned above for making this post far, far better than it started.)

Too Topical? Too Safe? Too Family Friendly? — What Belongs in Crosswords?

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Building a great crossword is a balancing act.

Your grid entries need to be interesting, yet accessible. You need to navigate long crossings and tight corners without resorting to too many abbreviations, too much crosswordese, or creating the dreaded Natick, a crossing of two obscure entries. Some solvers don’t like partial phrases, others don’t like proper names or brand names.

Your cluing has to be clever but not impenetrable. How much wordplay is too much? How many fill-in-the-blank clues before your clue section resembles your grid? The cluing must be fresh and vibrant yet timeless and not too of-its-era to make the cut for reprint and collection later.

No matter how you clue it, older solvers may decry newer names, slang, terminology, or pop culture references, while younger solvers will bemoan not just older references they consider passe, but long-established crossword-friendly words they quickly tire of seeing.

And that’s all without considering the difficulty in creating engaging, interesting themes or gimmicks for the puzzle.

Man, it’s amazing crosswords get made at all.

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[Image courtesy of Mike Peters and The Comic Strips.]

That question of fresh entries and cluing vs. older/more familiar fare is a curious one. It raises further questions.

For instance, how much can you talk about what’s going on in the world?

By referring to unpleasant topics, however topical, will you alienate solvers who use the crossword as an escape? Or do you risk the puzzle feeling too sanitized and safe by NOT acknowledging the circumstances of the world at the time of the puzzle’s publication?

There are arguments for both sides. I mean, who wants to see ADOLF in a grid? (But then again, it’s not like IDI AMIN has a hard time finding his way into grid fill.)

farrar

Margaret Farrar believed that crosswords should avoid “death, disease, war and taxes.” Purposely avoiding unpleasant fill and cluing is informally known as the “Sunday Morning Breakfast Test.” (Our friends at Penny Press know plenty about this, as they shy away from unpleasant entries with diligence.)

But on the flip side, to ignore the unpleasantness of the world potentially ignores the people that unpleasantness affects.

As we continue to push for greater representation in crosswords in both editorial staff and constructors, you cannot deny that including the experiences of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community somewhat necessitates facing those unpleasant aspects of our history and our society.

To exclude them is to exclude potentially thought-provoking and important fill and cluing. (One could easily argue that the vast majority of our own Eyes Open crosswords would not pass the Sunday Morning Breakfast Test.)

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[Image courtesy of Charmy’s Army.]

Not everyone greets adding new cultural fill with open arms, of course. A few years ago, an LA Times crossword solver complained to us (on our holiday gift guide post, of all places) about “ignorant ghetto language” in the crossword. He referred specifically to innocuous entries like “sup,” “did,” and “street cred.”

Thankfully, he is an outlier.

But on the topic of excluding words from crosswords, when Will Shortz was asked about it, he had an interesting response:

If a word or term is used in the columns of The Times, or in cultured society in general, I think it’s probably O.K. for a crossword, even if it’s touchy or slightly unpleasant. I strive to have crosswords reflect real life as much as possible. … I don’t believe in banning words, except for the very worst. And I’d be happy to abolish the term ‘breakfast test’ completely.

breafkast

I think this is a topic I’m going to ask crossword solvers about more often. I’d be curious to see where they stand on crossword content and topicality.

I suspect opinions will vary, but I also suspect that most solvers welcome new fill, new entries, and new references in clues. Every crossword is an opportunity to learn and expand one’s knowledge, and add to the mental lexicon of crossword knowledge we each build as we solve.

So where do you stand, fellow puzzlers? Do you prefer your crosswords as an escape or as a puzzly reflection of the world around us? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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Two Crossword Anniversaries This Week!

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exercise-brain-crossword-670x335

Crossword history isn’t exactly a field of study that dates back to ancient times — I mean, we only celebrated the centennial of the crossword back in 2013 — but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge amount of historical crossword material out there to be commemorated.

In fact, this week marks two fairly meaningful crossword anniversaries, one to be celebrated today, the other tomorrow.

The first crossword anniversary to observe is the 150th birthday of Arthur Wynne.

[Image courtesy of express.co.uk.]

In 1913, Arthur Wynne created the first modern crossword puzzle — which he called a Word-Cross puzzle — and over a hundred years later, we are still enjoying the ever-increasing variety of puzzles and clues spawned by that “fun”-filled grid.

Wynne was born on June 22, 1871 in Liverpool, England, but moved to the states in the early 1890s, spending time in Pittsburgh and New York City before creating his Word-Cross puzzle for the New York Sunday World.

Of course, the crossword as we know it — with its square grid and the black-and-white square patterning — are due not to Mr. Wynne, but to his former associate, future first New York Times crossword editor Margaret Farrar.

But, speaking of figures who helped elevate crosswords to greater prominence, that brings us to our second anniversary.

Tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of the release of the influential crossword documentary Wordplay.

Wordplaymp

Wordplay introduced several famous names in crossword tournament circles, like Ellen Ripstein, Trip Payne, Tyler Hinman, Jon Delfin, and Al Sanders, as well as highlighting many celebrity crossword solvers like Jon Stewart, Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, and more. The documentary also chronicled the 2005 edition of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, bringing national attention to the tournament (and inspiring a Simpsons episode about crosswords).

Wordplay sparked a 40% increase in attendance the year after it aired, and the growing interest in the yearly event caused the tournament to actually change locations to a larger venue in New York City for 7 years!

(It has since returned to the Stamford Marriott, its traditional setting, despite actually topping the biggest NYC attendance in 2019, and again virtually in 2021.)

But the impact Wordplay had on the tournament itself, and interest in crosswords in general, cannot be overstated.

And this week, we celebrate both crossword anniversaries, one marking the genesis of crosswords, and the other marking how far crosswords had come, and how much farther they could go in the future.

It’s a pretty cool confluence of dates, to be sure.

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Crossword History: An Updated Timeline

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Back in 2013, we created a timeline of events from crossword history as part of our celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the crossword.

Although 105 isn’t as prestigious as 100, and the anniversary is technically tomorrow, we thought we’d honor the day this year by updating our comprehensive look at the long (yet surprisingly short) road it took to get to that marvelous centennial!

So, without further ado or folderol, we proudly present:

A Brief History of the Crossword (Updated)

16th – 11th century BC

Inscriptions from New Kingdom-era Egypt (Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties) of horizontal and vertical lines of text divided into equal squares, that can be read both across the rows and down the columns, are made. These inscriptions are later referred to by Egyptologists as “Egyptian crossword puzzles.”

19th century AD

Rudimentary crosswords, similar to word squares, begin appearing in England, and later elsewhere in Europe.

June 22, 1871

Future inventor of the crossword, Arthur Wynne, is born.

March 23, 1897

Future New York Times crossword editor Margaret Farrar is born.

February 25, 1907

Future New York Times crossword editor Will Weng is born.

December 21, 1913

The New York World publishes the first crossword, invented by Liverpool journalist Arthur Wynne. (The puzzle is originally known as a word-cross.)

January 6, 1916

Future New York Times crossword editor Eugene T. Maleska is born.

1920

Margaret Farrar is hired by The New York World as a secretary, but soon finds herself assisting Arthur Wynne with proofreading puzzles. Her puzzles soon exceed Wynne’s in popularity.

Colonel H.W. Hill publishes the first Crossword Dictionary.

1923

Margaret Farrar revises the cluing system for crosswords, sorting them into “Horizontal” and “Vertical” clues by number. (It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the more familiar “Across” and “Down” terminology became the norm.)

1924

Margaret Farrar publishes the first book of crossword puzzles under contract for Richard L. Simon and Max Schuster, “The Cross-Word Puzzle Book.” It was an instant bestseller, launching Simon & Schuster as a major publisher. (Additional information available below the timeline.)

The Daily Express, founded in 1900, becomes the first newspaper in the United Kingdom to carry crosswords.

Crossword-themed novelty songs hit the airwaves as the puzzle craze intensifies, most notably “Crossword Mama, You Puzzle Me (But Papa’s Gonna Figure You Out).”

The Amateur Crossword Puzzle League of America, a self-appointed group of puzzle enthusiasts, lobbies for rotational symmetry in crosswords, which becomes the standard.

Solver Ruth Franc von Phul becomes a minor celebrity after winning The New York Herald-Tribune’s National All Comers Cross Word Puzzle Tournament at the age of 20. (She would win again 2 years later.)

January 15, 1925

“Felix All Puzzled,” the first animated short to feature a crossword, is released.

February 2, 1925

The crossword-fueled musical revue “Puzzles of 1925” opens on Broadway. It runs until May of 1925.

February 15, 1925

Disney releases a crossword-themed animated short, “Alice Solves the Puzzle.”

1926

The cryptic crossword is invented by Edward Powys Mathers, who publishes under the pseudonym Torquemada. He devises them for The Observer newspaper.

First reported instances of Braille crosswords, as newspapers mention Helen Keller solving Braille crosswords and recommending them to the blind.

1931

Dell Puzzle Magazines begins publishing.
(Dell Publishing itself was founded in 1921.)

1941

Dell Pocket Crossword Puzzles first published.
(The magazine continues to this day.)

February 15, 1942

The New York Times runs its first Sunday edition crossword. (Additional information available below the timeline.)

June 2, 1944

Physics teacher and crossword constructor Leonard Dawe is questioned by authorities after several words coinciding with D-Day invasion plans appear in London’s Daily Telegraph. (Additional information available below the timeline.)

1950

The crossword becomes a daily feature in The New York Times.

August 26, 1952

Future New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz is born.

1968

Lyricist Stephen Sondheim begins creating cryptic crosswords for New York Magazine, helping introduce Americans to British-style crosswords.

1969

Will Weng succeeds Margaret Farrar as the second crossword editor for The New York Times.

1973

Penny Press is founded.

1977

Eugene T. Maleska succeeds Will Weng as the third crossword editor for The New York Times.

1978

First year of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, later featured in the documentary Wordplay. 149 contestants compete for the title in the first national crossword tournament since the 1930s.

1979

Howard Garns creates the modern Sudoku puzzle for Dell Magazines (under the name Number Place), the first pen-and-paper puzzle to rival the crossword in popularity (though this spike in popularity would occur decades later under the name Sudoku).

June 11, 1984

Margaret Farrar, while working on the 134th volume in Simon & Schuster’s crossword puzzle book series, passes away.

1993

Will Shortz succeeds Eugene T. Maleska as the fourth crossword editor for The New York Times.

November 5, 1996

One of the most clever and famous crosswords of all time is published, the election-preceding crossword where either BOB DOLE ELECTED or CLINTON ELECTED could read out, depending on the solver’s answers.

1998

The Wall Street Journal adds a crossword to its newspaper, and Mike Shenk is appointed editor.

June 23, 2006

Wordplay documentary hits theaters, featuring celebrity solvers of crosswords as well as the participants and organizers of the 2005 edition of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

February 29 – March 2, 2008

Thanks in part to the Wordplay documentary, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament outgrows its previous setting and moves to Brooklyn.

June 6, 2008

Matt Gaffney launches his Weekly Crossword Contest (MGWCC).

August 2008

Lollapuzzoola, a crossword-solving tournament with a more tongue-in-cheek, freeform style, launches in Jackson Heights, New York.

October 6, 2008

Patrick Blindauer’s famous dollar bill-inspired crossword puzzle is published.

2009

The city of Lvov, Ukraine, creates a crossword that spans an entire side of a 100-foot-tall residential building, with clues scattered around the city’s major landmarks and attractions. It’s awesome.

October 11, 2011

PuzzleNation.com goes live.

June 2012

David Steinberg launches the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, designed to compile a complete database of every New York Times crossword.

August 13, 2012

PuzzleNation Blog is launched.

June 14, 2013

Matt Gaffney celebrates five years of MGWCC,
stating that MGWCC will run for 1000 weeks
(which puts the final edition around August 6th, 2027).

December 21, 2013

The Crossword officially turns one hundred years old.

Additional information:

1924: The publishing house Simon & Schuster, agreed to a small (3,600-copy) run of a crossword puzzle book, prompted by founder Richard L. Simon’s aunt, who wanted to give such a book to a friend. It became “a runaway bestseller.”

In no time the publisher had to put the book back on press; through repeated printings, it sold more than 100,000 copies. Soon a second collection followed, and then a third and a fourth. In 1924 and 1925 the crossword books were among the top 10 nonfiction bestsellers for the year, besting, among others, The Autobiography of Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan.

February 15, 1942: The New York Times initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them “a primitive form of mental exercise”; the motivating impulse for the Times to finally run the puzzle (which took over 20 years even though its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was a longtime crossword fan) appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

In a memo dated December 18, 1941, an editor conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts. The puzzle proved popular, and Sulzberger himself would author a Times puzzle before the year was out.

June 2, 1944: The words Omaha (codename for one of Normandy’s beaches), Utah (another Normandy beach codename), Overlord (the name for the plan to land at Normandy on June 6th), mulberry (nickname for a portable harbor built for D-Day), and Neptune (name for the naval portion of the invasion) all appeared in Daily Telegraph crosswords during the month preceding the D-Day landing.

This has been attributed to either an incredible coincidence or Dawe somehow overhearing these words (possibly slipped by soldiers involved) and incorporating them into puzzles unwittingly.

Do you have any suggestions for additions for our Crossword Timeline? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!

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