Friday, December 21, 2007

Today in History - 1913

Arthur Wynne (1871 - 1945), born Liverpool, England, was a British editor and puzzle constructor in his home country and the United States of America.

He worked for the New York World and one day was asked to invent a new game for the paper. Wynne thought of a game he had played in his childhood called "Magic Squares" and soon came up with the crossword puzzle, which was first issued on this day in the World. It was originally called a "Word-Cross Puzzle" and was diamond shaped and had no black spaces.

Soon, it became "cross-word" then "crossword", and had black spaces. Arthur came out with his first crossword puzzle book in 1924.