The Crossword Puzzle Is 100 Years Old

Historians of the crossword puzzle generally date its first appearance to December 21, 1913, just about 100 years ago. Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England, published a 'word-cross' puzzle (picture left) in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor.

But a decade would go by before the crossword, as it was by then called - apparently due to a typesetter's error - would become one of the biggest fads of the Roaring Twenties.