December 21st is Crossword Puzzle Day

Are you among those who enjoy solving crossword puzzles? If yes, have you ever pondered over the history of this game? If you have not, then it would interest you to know more about December, 21: Crossword puzzle day and why it is being celebrated the globally. This wonderful game is known in history to have been invented by a New York journalist, English-born Arthur Wynne in the year, 1913. This man, if still alive, would have been amazed at the tempo that is being generated by the crossword puzzle not only in New York but the whole world.

Not only does this type of puzzle appear in the pages of national dailies and magazines, it is also one of the most popular games on the internet presently. Even the computers are not left out as they are used in a frenzy to generate millions of cryptic crosswords over the years. It has even served as a promotional tool in the sales of items like dictionaries, newspapers, magazines, pencils, notepads, erasers and lots more for close to 90 years since its invention in December, 21: Crossword puzzle day. There are even people who spend their time engaged in challenged crossword solving online. It is a game that has come to enjoy millions of devotees with the number increasing on daily basis.

Prior to his invention of the crossword puzzle, Wynne was assigned the role of creating puzzles for newspaper house he was working with then. One day his editor asked him to create something new, a word game. He then remembered a game he used to play as a child, the game of Magic Squares which is the arrangement of group of letters to form words which read the same both down and across. Armed with this knowledge, he went further to create a large and more complex replica of that game but with a twist – a clue was provided for each given word. This crossword puzzle was published on December 21, 1913 as one of the mental exercises included in the fun section of the newspaper. And from then, December, 21: Crossword puzzle day was born.

This crossword puzzle game was diamond-shaped and had clues attached to them, which helped to make the game easier to play. It became a winner, widely accepted by puzzle game lovers and within a short period, several other newspapers and magazines adopted it. Wynne did not stop there, rather he continued his experiments with different intriguing shapes which includes but not limited to circle before he finally settled for the rectangle. By the year 1923, lots of leading US newspapers were already publishing the crossword puzzles and within a short period, the trend spread over to England. Soon after, virtually all the daily newspapers in US and Great Britain featured crossword puzzles in one of their newspaper pages. Little wonder why the December, 21: Crossword puzzle day is revered by many people.

You may be surprised by the class of persons who are engaged in solving the games of crossword puzzles. Even the US former president, Bill Clinton is not left out as Will Shortz, the crossword editor of the New York Times confirmed that he solved a crossword puzzle in 6 minutes and 54 seconds, even while he talked on the home as he was solving it. December, 21: Crossword puzzle day will always be a day to be remembered by every crossword puzzle lover.