Jenny's Noodle

Happy 100th Birthday Crossword Puzzles!

If you've been to Google over the last 24 hours, you know why today's date is so puzzling.

(Note: At the time of this writing, Google hasn't yet published the answers online, so here's a link to my unverified solution. With regard to difficulty, I'd give it a Tuesday rating.)

The world's first crossword puzzle was printed on December 21, 1913.

The diamond-shaped puzzle, known as a "Word-Cross" (pictured at right), was published in the "Fun" section of the Sunday paper, the New York World. It was written by Arthur Wynne, a British journalist.

Crossword constructor Merle Reagle explains:

On a snowy evening in the early 1900s, a newspaper editor at the New York World was hunched over his desk trying to think of something special for the Christmas issue.

Remembering the small word squares he’d solved as a young Brit in Liverpool, he drew a diamond-shaped grid with numbered squares and numbered clues. It contained 32 words, and his simple instruction read:

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

The puzzle appeared Dec. 21, 1913, and what 42-year-old Arthur Wynne had created was the first crossword puzzle.

Here's New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz with more: