Crossword puzzles were discovered by Arthur Wyne in 1913. He was working for a newspaper called ‘The New York World’. His editor asked him to create a new game for the entertainment section. It was diamond-shaped and was referred to as word-cross. Later, it came to be known as cross-word and finally because of an accidental typo, the hyphen was eliminated and it became crossword.
Wyne drew inspiration from an older game played in ancient Pompeii that was translated from Latin to English as Magic Squares. Magic squares is a game involving multiple players whereas crosswords are meant to be solved alone. The first occurrence of a crossword in a publication was in Pearson’s magazine in 1922. ‘The New York Times’ published the crossword on 1 February, 1930. The first book on crosswords called ‘The Crossword Puzzle Book’ was published jointly by Dick Simon and Lincoln Schuster in 1924.
