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Friday, October 3, 2014

The First Crossword (Kinda Sucked)

Sporcle time.

On December 21, 1913, a man named Arthur Wynne created what's recognized as the world's first crossword puzzle, running in the New York World. It was an evolution of word squares, in which the same words are created going across and down. Sooner or later someone was going to look at one and go 'wait, what if we made them different words?' Minds were promptly blown.

Presented to you is Wynne's inaugural puzzle and 10 minutes in which to complete it, which should be enough given that Sporcle will tell you when you have a right answer and you don't need to go erasing anything. I suppose there's a chance someone reading this has already done it at some point, in which case I say: holy Moses, weren't some of those clues just the most straight-up bullshit? I suppose you have to start somewhere with these things, but clues based on basically the writer's opinion ("What we all should be")? Two clues with the same answer (you go do the puzzle and see which one that is)?

If you have done the inaugural one, perhaps you'd like to do the commemorative 100th-anniversary puzzle Google ran last December. This one actually follows modern crossword conventions.

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