Ancient roots: word squares
Long before newspaper crosswords, people played with interlocking words. The most famous example is the Sator word square (“SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS”), found in Pompeii and elsewhere, dating to the first century CE. Scholars debate its meaning, but as a 5×5 reversible word square it foreshadows the grid-based wordplay to come.
1913: Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross”
The first modern crossword appeared on December 21, 1913, in the New York World. Created by Liverpool-born journalist Arthur Wynne, it was diamond-shaped, labeled a “word-cross,” and lacked internal blocks as we know them today. Its popularity sparked imitators across U.S. papers.
1920s: the crossword craze
Crosswords went mainstream in the 1920s. In 1924, Simon & Schuster published The Cross Word Puzzle Book, edited by Margaret Petherbridge (later Margaret Farrar). The book’s runaway success helped cement crosswords as a U.S. pastime and launched Farrar’s influential editing career.
1926: Britain invents the cryptic
In Britain, crosswords evolved into the cryptic style—clues that are part definition and part wordplay. Poet Edward Powys Mathers (“Torquemada”) popularized the form in The Observer from 1926, establishing many conventions still used by British setters today.
1942: The New York Times joins in
Although initially skeptical, The New York Times launched its Sunday crossword on February 15, 1942, with Margaret Farrar as its first editor. The daily Times crossword followed later (1950), and the NYT puzzle has since become a global bellwether for American-style crosswords.
1944: The D-Day crossword scare
Weeks before the Normandy landings, a run of Allied code names (“Utah,” “Omaha,” “Overlord,” “Neptune,” etc.) appeared as answers in the Daily Telegraph crossword. British intelligence briefly investigated setter Leonard Dawe, but the incident was ultimately deemed coincidence mixed with classroom gossip—still one of crossword history’s wildest stories.
Modern era: themes, tech, and apps
Post-war editors refined rules (symmetry, interlock, avoiding unchecked letters) and embraced theme construction, where multiple entries share an idea or trick. From the 1990s onward, software and databases accelerated constructing; today, crosswords thrive in print and in apps, alongside variants (minis, diagramless, barred, cryptics) and a more inclusive, global constructor community.
Further reading
- Arthur Wynne and the first crossword (American Crossword Puzzle Tournament)
- History of the NYT Crossword (overview)
- 100 years since the first crossword (Guardian)
- The D-Day Telegraph crossword alarm (summary)
- Edward Powys Mathers (“Torquemada”) & cryptics
- The Sator word square (Britannica)
- Crosswords across a century (WSJ feature)