Before Wordle, There Was Cross-Word Mania - Deepstash
Before Wordle, There Was Cross-Word Mania

Before Wordle, There Was Cross-Word Mania

Curated from: zocalopublicsquare.org

Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:

5 ideas

·

107 reads

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

2022: Wordle Takes Over The Internet

2022: Wordle Takes Over The Internet

In its short lifespan, Wordle has already made the tricky transition from a cult phenomenon to an established part of our daily lives.

Created by a software engineer in Brooklyn for his partner in October 2021, the online word puzzle game became a global overnight success.

But the game’s swift pop-culture ascendancy, which led to it getting acquired by the New York Times for upward of $1 million in January, isn’t unprecedented. In fact, 100 years before Wordle entered the scene, an even bigger word puzzle craze swept the nation: the “cross-word mania” of the 1920s.

2

35 reads

Word Cross In the 1920s

Word Cross In the 1920s

The modern “word-cross” appeared for the first time in print in the December 21, 1913 edition of New York World’s FUN Supplement. Section editor Arthur Wynne, trying to fill the Christmas insert, drew inspiration from his native England, where Victorian newspapers and magazines regularly published word squares, acrostic puzzles where the same words can be read both across and down.

Building on this prototype, Wynne debuted FUN’s Word-Cross Puzzle.

2

24 reads

The Word Cross Becomes Crossword

The Word Cross Becomes Crossword

The word-cross—which eventually became cross-word, likely due to a type-setting accident, and later dropped the hyphen to become, simply, the crossword—wasn’t supposed to be a regular feature in the weekly supplement. Wynne found the prep work tedious, and typographers resented setting up the puzzle shape for print. But players were hooked; when the word game didn’t appear one Sunday, they demanded to know where it had gone, helping ensure that game stayed on as a regular feature for FUN.

2

20 reads

Making Crossword Sustain Its Popularity

Making Crossword Sustain Its Popularity

The editors of FUN supplement of New York World, who were trying to fill the Christmas insert, drew inspiration from native England, where Victorian newspapers and magazines regularly published word squares, acrostic puzzles where the same words can be read both across and down

The editors also began setting the puzzles a full week ahead, proofing them for errors and establishing uniform standards like only using dictionary words for gameplay

2

8 reads

The crossword faced its critics in the 1920s

  • The president of the British Optical Association blamed the crossword for eye strain.
  • A literary debate around puzzling also raged.
  • Some believed it was not taken seriously.
  • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh "answered in the negative" when asked if they had any crossword books
  • Some claimed that the working of crossword puzzles is a childish mentality.

2

20 reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

colinii

A lot of problems would disappear if we talked to each other more than talking about each other.

Colin I.'s ideas are part of this journey:

The Startup Collection

Learn more about history with this collection

How to secure funding

How to market and sell your product or service

How to scale and grow your business

Related collections

Similar ideas

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

100+ Learning Journeys

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates