The Crossword Century Read online

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  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

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 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 puzzles—History. I. Title.

  GV1507.C7C544 2014

  793.73'2—dc23 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

  Puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley

  ACROSS

  1

  Rewrite items in New York newspaper (5)

  4

  Crossword dictionary rooms (8)

  8

  Cycles back to video game company (4)

  9

  Revolutionary force almost mad at infamous Spanish torturer (10)

  10

  West of Italy’s capital, politico Sarah (Democrat) with mom or dad (10)

  11

  Name in the middle of caricatures! (4)

  12

  Get up around noon and gargle (5)

  14

  British dirty old man by the French yard where the Enigma code was broken (9)

  17

  Swung a fist (missing the head) getting a wallop in and split (9)

  20

  Crossword inventor’s success in speech (5)

  21

  Yours truly and an alien come face-to-face (4)

  23

  Puzzle dragged on, enveloping confused Republican squad (4, 6)

  26

  Puzzle editor to be paid to sell imperfections to the Reverend (4, 6)

  27

  Excellent shot goes out (4)

  28

  Mandator meandering without rhyme or reason (2, 6)

  29

  Highly polished Southern rock guitar line (5)

  DOWN

  1

  First off, NPR venue covers brooding one for left-leaning magazine (3, 6)

  2

  Note a Michigan city for snowbirds (5)

  3

  Overstuffed engagements after switching first and last (5)

  4

  Lewis who wrote Christmas song for audition (7)

  5

  Most intense Western Indians appear in part of play (7)

  6

  Every nine weeks: BLT, hominy, bananas (9)

  7

  “Way cool, using deadly gas!” (5)

  13

  Tiny amount of interest in Lily-like flower (9)

  14

  Pedestrian left out nuts (3)

  15

  After the face off, bow to pressure and then stop (3)

  16

  Hungarian puzzle maker and I broke urn, sadly (4, 5)

  18

  Mob lacking resistance around her bovine abode (7)

  19

  Accidentally murder a contributor to the Listener? (7)

  22

  Cited wrong statute (5)

  24

  Takes a direction from forces for kings and queens, say (5)

  25

  Selection of charcuterie for child development centers? (5)

  ** Solution to this puzzle can be found after the Index at the end of this text.

  FOR LUCY

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Puzzle

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  PART ONE

  ACROSS

  GENESIS

  FAD

  JARGON

  ANCESTORS

  NINA

  FAIR

  WICKED

  ALAMO

  AUTHORSHIP

  TRANSLATION

  CANT

  NEWS

  SPOONER

  SONDHEIM

  CRYPTIC

  PART TWO

  DOWN

  DOUBLE-CROSSING

  GAGA

  FAST

  ADDICTION

  DUAL

  PROGRAM

  INTELLIGENCE

  GUMSHOE

  SIMPSON

  BUG

  PLUM

  A-LIST

  FUTURE

  IMPLEMENT

  RESOURCES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  PUZZLE SOLUTION

  INTRODUCTION

  This is a book about having FUN with words. And if you’re wondering why that word is in capital letters, all will become clear.

  And it’s 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 language—albeit a lo
ve 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 world’s first crossword appeared—although 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 puzzle—or 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, we’ll 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. We’ll see fictional crossword encounters, from The West Wing to The Simpsons, and we’ll 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.

  We’ll 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, we’ll be crossing the Atlantic Ocean—a few times, in fact—and 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?

  PART ONE

  * * *

  ACROSS

  FALL IN A GARDEN, DEPICTED?

  GENESIS

  How the crossword first appeared in 1913 and became an overnight sensation in 1924

  Newsday’s crossword editor puts it best. “Liverpool’s 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 money—or, 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 Wynne’s name remains unspoken by almost all. Who was he?

  Well, he wasn’t the Lennon or the McCartney of crosswords; we’ll 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 was—at least initially, and in his own mind—a 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 Hearst’s rival, Joseph Pulitzer.

  As a kind of precursor to the New York Post, The World mixed sensation with investigation, and it was Wynne’s 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 you’re in charge of “Fun.” It asks the reader to think of answers. But it’s 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 symmetry—whether foursquare square or tilted, as word squares often were, to make a diamond—but there are only so many words that fit with one another in this way.

  It’s also a less demanding challenge for the solver: In a four-by-four word square, say, as soon as the first four-letter word goes in, once across and once down, the grid is 44 percent filled.

  For the Christmas edition of the New York World on Sunday, December 21, 1913, Wynne tried something new. What if the entries read differently across and down? And so, without fanfare, this:

  Fill in the small squares with words which agree with the following definitions.

  2-3.

  What bargain hunters enjoy.

  6-22.

  What we all should be.

  4-5.

  A written acknowledgment.

  4-26.

  A day dream.

  6-7.

  Such and nothing more.

  2-11.

  A talon.

  10-11.

  A bird.

  19-28.

  A pigeon.

  14-15.

  Opposed to less.

  F-7.

  Part of your head.

  18-19.

  What this puzzle is.

  23-30.

  A river in Russia.

  22-23.

  An animal of prey.

  1-32.

  To govern.

  26-27.

  The close of a day.

  33-34.

  An aromatic plant.

  28-29.

  To elude.

  N-8.

  A fist.

  30-31.

  The plural of is.

  24-31.

  To agree with.

  8-9.

  To cultivate.

  3-12.

  Part of a ship.

  12-13.

  A bar of wood or iron.

  20-29.

  One.

  16-17.

  What artists learn to do.

  5-27.

  Exchanging.

  20-21.
>
  Fastened.

  9-25.

  To sink in mud.

  24-25.

  Found on the seashore.

  13-21.

  A boy.

  10-18.

  The fiber of the gomuti palm.

  The answers are in the Resources section at the end of this book. Puzzles nowadays don’t come with an instruction to “fill in the small squares” and would be more likely to clue DOH with a reference to Homer Simpson than by “Fiber of the gomuti palm,” but it’s recognizably a crossword. Or, rather, a “Word-Cross.” Wynne’s name is just as good a way of describing the pastime as the more familiar version, but a typographical anomaly two weeks later offered the alternative “Find the Missing Cross Words.” The following week’s heading announced a “Cross-Word Puzzle,” and that’s the version that stuck. It was to be some decades later that the name decisively shed its fussy capitals and sporadic hyphen.