A Crossword puzzle helps people focus and concentrate on a specific word with a certain number of letters that fit on a grid. People take great pleasure in completing crossword puzzles and ensuring that the history of crossword puzzles continues.
Early History
The first known crossword puzzle, a four by four grid with no shaded squares and horizontal and vertical clues, appeared in an Italian magazine in 1890. In 1913 a crossword appeared in the New York World which is more widely remembered as the first one. The New York Times was one of the first critics of the “sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words. Nevertheless, The New York Times published their first crossword puzzle in 1942.
Crossword Basics
The white cells are called entries or answers and sometimes called lights. Shaded cells are black squares, shaded squares, blanks or darks which are used to separate words. An American style crossword puzzle grid has solid areas of white squares and every answer usually has at least 3 letters. A British style grid resembles a lattice with more shaded squares than the American grid. Japanese crossword puzzle grids require that the shaded cells do not share a side and the corner squares must be white. The Swedish style crossword puzzle grid does not use clue numbers and the grid usually does not have a symmetry design. Capitalization of answers is usually ignored in crossword puzzles. Clues are usually simple answer definitions although some clues feature anagrams (word plays). Clues and answers should agree in tense (clue is past tense so answer will be past tense).
Weekday puzzles in The New York Times are a standard size of a 15 x 15 square; however weekend puzzles range from 21 x 21, 23 x 23 or 25 x 25.
Difficulty
Monday puzzles in The New York Times are the easiest and progress throughout the week until the hardest puzzle appears on Saturday with the Sunday puzzle difficulty being the same as the Thursday crossword puzzle.
Crossword Puzzle Types
In Cryptic crossword puzzles the clues are puzzles themselves. Double clue lists is one grid that can be filled by using two lists of clues. A Cipher crossword puzzle, also called code breakers and code crackers, uses 26 numbers that serve as a cipher for letters. Cells that have matching numbers are filled with matching letters. A Diagramless crossword puzzle is a skeleton crossword with a certain dimension grid which the player fills without specified clue numbers and shaded squares. A Fill-in crossword puzzle has a full list of words to be entered into the grid. Words must intersect within the designated space. In the Crossnumber puzzle, the solutions to the clues are numbers instead of words. The Acrostic crossword puzzle consists of two parts: lettered clues and numbered blanks.
Crossword puzzles can be quite challenging or simple depending on how you want to spend your day. Your knowledge will be enriched even though originally a clergyman in 1924 called the working of crossword puzzles “the mark of a childish mentality and there is no use for persons to pretend that working on one of the puzzles carries any intellectual value with it”.
