Crossword
Crosswords are letter
games (and thus a form of mind
sport). Modern crosswords take the form of a square grid of black and white
squares; the aim is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words reading
across and down, by solving clues which yield the words. The black squares (commonly
called 'blanks') have no letters, and are used to separate words (all contiguous
blocks of white squares spell words). Squares in which words begin are numbered,
left to right, top to bottom. The clues are then referred to by these numbers
(ambiguities are resolved by the common practice of referring to clues by both
number and direction - for example, "1 Across" or "17 Down"); at the end of the
clue the total number of letters is given for the convenience of the solver. In
almost all cases, the grid is rotationally symmetric.
An example
A small example, to illustrate the format:
Clues
Across
1. Sheep sound (3)
3.
Neither liquid nor gas (5)
5. Humour (3)
Down
1. Road
passenger transport (3)
2. Permit (5)
4. Shortened form of Dorothy (3)
The solution to this crossword is:
| 1B | 9A | 2A | . | . |
| 9U | . | 9L | . | . |
| 3S | 9O | 9L | 9I | 4D |
| . | . | 9O | . | 9O |
| . | . | 5W | 9I | 9T |
History
(to be added, when I've
checked my facts)
Outline:
- evolved from "word squares"
- diamond
shapes
- dates (find them out)
In 1913, Arthur
Wynne published a puzzle in the
New York World which embodied most of
the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle, which can be seen at
this
website, is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the
inventor.
Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the World.
The first book of crossword puzzles, however, did not appear until 1924,
published by Simon
and Schuster. The book was an instant hit and crossword puzzles became the
craze of 1924. - tradition of pseudonymous compilers
- D-Day
landings
In 1944, Allied security officers were disturbed
by the appearance, in a series of crossword puzzles published in the London
Daily
Telegraph, of words that happened to be secret code names for military operations.
"Utah" (the code name for one of the landing sites) appeared in a puzzle published
on May 2nd, 1944. Subsequent puzzles included the words "Omaha" and "Mulberry"
(the highly-secret artificial harbors)
On June 2nd, just four days before
the invasion, the puzzle included both the words "Neptune" (the naval
operations plan) and "Overlord." That was the last straw, and the author of the
puzzles, a schoolteacher, was arrested and interrogated. The investigators finally
concluded that the appearance of the words was just a coincidence. The event has
been so described in histories, and has even been used as an illustration of how
seemingly meaningful events can arise out of pure coincidence.
According
to National
Geographic magazine, though, in 1984
the schoolteacher revealed that one of his students had picked up the words while
hanging around army camps. When the teacher had asked his students to provide
unusual words as ingredients for his puzzles, he had innocently passed them on.
Notation
A notation has evolved
to allow crosswords to be rendered compactly, and enjoyed by the blind
or partially sighted.
It consists of giving the locations of the black squares
in each row as letters (A=1,B=2, etc.), eg for the example crossword above:
- D E
- B D E
-
-
A B D
- A B
Although the numbering scheme could be consistently
applied from this information, it is customary to quote the starting square of
each clue in (number-letter) format to assist the solver.
Variants
Several variant types of crossword now exist, including:
- Cryptic crosswords,
in which the clues are puzzles in themselves.
Typically,
the clue contains an actual definition that is cleverly hidden within another
sentence; the remainder of the clue uses wordplay to refer obliquely to portions
of the word. For example, in one puzzle by Mel Taub, the word "important" is given
the clue "To bring worker into the country may prove significant." The explanation
is that to "import" means "to bring into the country;" the "worker" is a worker
ant; and "significant" means "important. (One of the frustrations of
solving cryptic crosswords is that even after seeing the right answer, it is not
always possible to figure out
why it is the right answer).
(Cryptic
crosswords are not to be confused with cryptograms, a different form of puzzle
based on a substitution
cipher.) - Barred crosswords, which have no black squares;
instead, bold lines between squares indicate word boundaries.
- Circular
puzzles, with radial and tangential clues.
In
1968
and
1969, composer and lyricist
Stephen Sondheim
published an astonishingly inventive series of crossword-like puzzles in
New
York magazine. The
Atlantic
Monthly regularly features a crossword-like "puzzler" by Emily Cox and Henry
Rathvon, which combines cryptic clues with diabolically ingenious variations on
the construction of the puzzle itself. In both cases, no two puzzles are alike
in construction, and the intent of the puzzle authors seems to be to entertain
with novelty, not to establish new variations of the crossword genre.
United
Kingdom
In the United
Kingdom, the Sunday Express newspaper published the first British crossword
on November 2, 1924. Several crossword
experts were recruited into code-breaking activities during World
War II at Bletchley
Park in England.
See also: Scrabble,
Upwords (board games based
on the crossword concept)
