December 21: Wynne'ng words

On December 21, 1913, the first crossword puzzle was published. It was created by Arthur Wynne, a journalist born in Liverpool, who emigrated to the USA in 1891. He first worked for the Pittsburgh Press, and also was a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He later moved to New York, and the first puzzle was published in the New York World’s “fun” section. It was called a word-cross. The story goes that a typesetting error reversed the words and dropped the hyphen a few weeks later, and the crossword puzzle was born.

The first collection of crossword puzzles was published as a book in 1924. It was the first publication of two young men called Simon and Schuster. Simon’s aunt wanted to buy a book of crosswords for her daughter; Simon decided to publish one. They paid the newspaper $25 for each puzzle. The book was a spectacular success; they sold more than 300,000 books in the first year. Each book came with a pencil attached to it. Today, the company is owned by CBS and is one of the largest book publishers in the world.