Alan Connor - The Crossword Century: 100 Years of Witty Wordplay, Ingenious Puzzles, and Linguistic Mischief
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Since its debut in The New York World on December 21, 1913, the crossword puzzle has enjoyed a rich and surprisingly lively existence. Alan Connor, a comic writer known for his exploration of all things crossword in The Guardian, covers every twist and turn: from the 1920s, when crosswords were considered a menace to productive society; to World War II, when they were used to recruit code breakers; to their starring role in a 2008 episode of The Simpsons.
He also profiles the colorful characters who make up the interesting and bizarre subculture of crossword constructors and competitive solvers, including Will Shortz, the iconic New York Times puzzle editor who created a crafty crossword that appeared to predict the outcome of a presidential election, and the legions of competitive puzzle solvers who descend on a Connecticut hotel each year in an attempt to be crowned the American puzzle-solving champion.
At a time when the printed word is in decline, Connor marvels at the crosswords seamless transition onto Kindles and iPads, keeping the puzzle one of Americas favorite pastimes. He also explores the way the human brain processes crosswords versus computers that are largely stumped by clues that require wordplay or a simple grasp of humor.
A fascinating examination of our most beloved linguistic amusementand filled with tantalizing crosswords and clues embedded in the textThe Crossword Century is sure to attract the attention of the readers who made Word Freak and Just My Type bestsellers.
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GOTHAM BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
Copyright 2014 by Alan Connor
Photograph Credits
Page 54, top: Reprinted with permission from Editions Fayard
Page 54, bottom: Reprinted with permission from David R. Godine
Page 66: Courtesy of Jeremiah Farrell
Page 110: ITV Global/The Kobal Collection
Page 170: Courtesy of Calendar Puzzles
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
LIBRARY OF CO NGRESS CATALOGING-IN -PUBLICATION DATA
Connor, Alan.
The crossword century : 100 years of witty wordplay, ingenious puzzles, and linguistic mischief / Alan Connor.
pages cm
Includes index.
eBook ISBN 978-0-698-15701-9
1. Crossword puzzlesHistory. I. Title.
GV1507.C7C544 2014
793.73'2dc23 2014002612
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Version_1
FOR LUCY
PART ONE
PART TWO
T his is a book about having FUN with words. And if youre wondering why that word is in capital letters, all will become clear.
And its a very particular form of fun with words: one that involves jumbling and tumbling them into eye-pleasingly symmetrical patterns and making riddles, jokes, and poetry in the form of crossword clues. A love of crosswords is also a love of languagealbeit a love that enjoys seeing the object of its affections toyed with, tickled, and flipped upside down.
Crossword puzzles are a silly, playful way of taking English and making it into a game. They have been doing so since December 21, 1913, when the worlds first crossword appearedalthough lovers of language had been deriving pleasure from wordplay long before then, of course. However, it was the crossword that came to supersede all other puzzles. It has become a cornerstone of almost all newspapers and, for many, a fondly anticipated daily appointment.
The crossword today looks quite different than that first puzzleor that should perhaps read crosswords today so as to encompass the baroque creations seen in Sunday papers, the strange mutant British form known as the cryptic, and all of the themed and jokey variants on offer on any given day.
What they have in common is the pleasure of identifying what the constructor is asking for and seeing the answers mesh with one another until the puzzle is finished. For a century, the worker has whiled away journeys and parents have passed on tips and tricks in the hope that each grid tackled will be correctly filled.
In The Crossword Century, well be looking at the playfulness, the humor, and the frustration of the crossword in all its forms, and how the world of the puzzle has overlapped with espionage and humor, current affairs and literature. Well see fictional crossword encounters, from The West Wing to The Simpsons, and well see crosswords from the real world: the one that seemed to predict the outcome of a presidential election and the ones that appeared to be giving away the secrets of the Second World War.
Well look at how clues tantalize those who are addicted to puzzles by sending the solver on wild-goose chases, by being sweetly silly and soberly serious, and by stubbornly withholding their real meanings until the penny drops.
And we ask questions about the experience of solving: Why do some people try to finish crosswords as quickly as possible? Can computers crack clues? And does puzzling really stave off dementia?
As for how to read this book, please feel free to treat it like a puzzle. That is to say, you can start at 1 across and work sequentially, or you can dive in and out and follow your instincts. The chapters are in two sections: The ACROSS entries look at the creation of puzzles and the strange things that can go on within clues and grids, while the DOWNs describe what happens to the crossword once it escapes into the world and meets its solvers.
Like the British man who created the first crossword in New York, well be crossing the Atlantic Oceana few times, in factand I humbly hope that along the way I might persuade you that the baffling-looking British cryptic is a lot more enjoyable than legend has it.
Are you ready for FUN?
How the crossword first appeared in 1913 and became an overnight sensation in 1924
N ewsdays crossword editor puts it best. Liverpools two greatest gifts to the world of popular culture, writes Stanley Newman, are the Beatles and Arthur Wynne.
The comparison with the Beatles is on the moneyor, to use a more British locution, spot-on. Like the music of the Fab Four, the crossword is a global phenomenon that is at once American and British. But while the Beatles are known wherever recorded music is played, Arthur Wynnes name remains unspoken by almost all. Who was he?
Well, he wasnt the Lennon or the McCartney of crosswords; well meet them soon enough. He was perhaps crosswords Fats Domino: a pioneer who would see his innovation taken by others to strange, often baroque mutant forms and variants.
Not that this was how Wynne saw his career playing out when he became one of the forty million people who emigrated from Europe between 1830 and 1930, and one of the nine million heading from Liverpool for the New World during that same period.
The son of the editor of The Liverpool Mercury, Wynne wasat least initially, and in his own minda journalist. He spent most of his newspaper career working for the empire of print mogul William Randolph Hearst. His legacy, though, was not a piece of reporting, and it appeared in the New York World, a Democrat-supporting daily published by Hearsts rival, Joseph Pulitzer.
As a kind of precursor to the New York Post, The World mixed sensation with investigation, and it was Wynnes job to add puzzles to the jokes and cartoons for Fun, the Sunday magazine section. He had messed around with tried-and-tested formats: word searches, mazes, anagrams, rebuses.
Another available template was something called the word square, which we will look at in more detail in a later chapter. It takes up space, a very desirable property if youre in charge of Fun. It asks the reader to think of answers. But its very limited. Imagine a crossword in which each answer appears twice in the grid: once as an across and again as a down. Very pleasing in terms of visual symmetrywhether foursquare square or tilted, as word squares often were, to make a diamondbut there are only so many words that fit with one another in this way.
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