crossword puzzle, popular form of word puzzle. A crossword puzzle consists of a diagram, usually rectangular, divided into blank (white) and cancelled (black, shaded, or crosshatched) squares. This diagram is accompanied by two lists of numbered definitions or clues, one for the horizontal and the other for the vertical words, the numbers corresponding to identical numbers on the diagram. Into each of the blank squares of the diagram a certain letter of the alphabet is to be inserted, forming the words fitting the numbered definitions or clues. The words cross each other, or interlock, which gives the puzzle its name.
The first crosswords appeared in England during the 19th century. They were of an elementary kind apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally, and printed in children’s puzzle books and various periodicals. In the United States, however, the puzzle developed into a serious adult pastime. The first modern crossword puzzle was published on December 21, 1913, in the New York World’s Sunday supplement, Fun. It appeared as only one of a varied group of mental exercises, but it struck the fancy of the public. By 1923, crosswords were being published in most of the leading American newspapers, and the craze soon reached England. Soon almost all daily newspapers in the United States and Great Britain had a crossword feature of some kind. The Sunday Times of London ran perhaps the best-known puzzle.
Crosswords in various forms are found in almost every country and language. Scholars have even gone so far as to make them for Latin. Advocates claim the puzzles are both a pastime and an interesting means of improving the vocabulary. Though the majority of puzzles have the form of symmetrical patterns of shaded or blacked-out squares within a rectangle, there are many variations. These include: (1) an asymmetrical scattering of squares; (2) a plain diagram with no squares canceled and the ends of words marked simply by a thick line; (3) pictorial designs, either in outline containing the diagram or in line inside the diagram, or a combination of both; and (4) diagramless puzzles, with no squares cancelled and no word ends marked.
The general type of crossword has also been subject to variation. Some puzzles employ abstruse definitions, puns, and anagrams. A number of words in one puzzle may bear upon some announced theme, such as music, sports, literature, or geography. Many of the puzzles in this category are quite difficult. Again, some clues will be omitted altogether but a direction given that the words thus neglected belong to a particular class: jewels, for example, or words in a quotation. Sometimes every word will have some given prefix, suffix, or part in common, and only the rest of the word will actually fill the spaces in the diagram: (rat)ion, (rat)chet, etc.; unc(tion), cap(tion), etc.; qu(it)e, cr(it)ic, etc. Lester Markel, Sunday editor of The New York Times, insisted that puzzles appearing in that paper contain words linked to the news. Harold T. Bers, an advertising writer and puzzle constructor, devised the internal-clue crossword, in which the theme of the puzzle emerges gradually as successive definitions are solved: filling in “pussyfoot,” “caterwaul,” “kittenish”—together with an overall title “catalog”—would reveal the feline theme.