Free Crossword Puzzles Now Available Online
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009The first crossword puzzle appeared in New York World in 1913. The puzzle creator was Arthur Wynne. This first puzzle was called a “word-cross” puzzle, and they quickly became very popular in newspapers across the US and Canada – being published weekly in such papers as the Boston Globe by 1917 and into the 1920s.
Solving crossword puzzles soon became a popular activity at libraries where fanatics in the early 1920s made such use of the dictionaries and encyclopedias that regular users sometimes had a hard time getting their hands on them. Crossword puzzles became quite a fad in the 20s in America.
Simon and Schuster published the first complete book of crossword puzzles in 1924 and it came with a pencil attached. The book was very popular and helped make crossword puzzles the fad of 1924. This actually inspired a debate amongst earnest American commentators and religious leaders, some of whom were convinced that crossword puzzles were a “sinful waste of time”, that provided only empty, childish entertainment with no redeeming intellectual stimulation. How times have changed!
By 1930 crosswords were no longer the fad they were in the early 20s, but by then they had become a staple of newspaper readers across the country. Virtually every significant newspaper in America carried them. Even the stodgy Times of London started publishing crosswords in 1942.
Puzzle books continue to be published by several specialty puzzle and games publishers and these remain very popular. Meanwhile the internet has spawned a whole new interest in puzzles, as people can now download almost unlimited puzzles of almost any type. Crossword puzzles remain a very good way to improve your spelling and reading comprehension skills, and to improve your vocabulary. In other words, crossword and word search puzzles are not only entertaining, but they are educational too.
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