who in 1913 created what’s often cited as the world’s first crossword puzzle. There are a few notable differences between Wynne’s puzzle and those of today. His is a perfect diamond ...

Crosswords caught on in the first half of the 20th century, but the New York Times, whose puzzle is now famous, didn't publish a crossword until 1942. Illustration by Adam Simpson On a blustery ...

Try your hand at solving the world’s first crossword puzzle. Thursday crossword puzzles usually have a theme that asks a lot of the solver. Quigley explains a crossword puzzle theme as “the ...

A Nieman Lab twofer: Pair this one with Lyz Lenz’s “Doing a little word puzzle as the world burns.” — LHO The first crossword puzzle ever constructed ran in the December 21, 1913 edition of The New ...

Matt Jones has been making crossword puzzles since his late teens, with one of his first puzzles appearing in The New York Times when he was just 19. His weekly puzzle Jonesin’ has appeared in ...

The main reason crosswords feature rotational symmetry is that Margaret Farrar, the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times, set this rule in place, and other publications adopted it.