The puzzle proved popular, and Arthur Hays Sulzberger - the publisher of the New York Times and a longtime crossword fan himself - would author a Times puzzle before the year was out.Īnd so now, only a few years after the crossword itself celebrated its centennial, the most famous crossword outlet in the world is celebrating three-quarters of a century, along with a wonderful legacy of innovation, wordplay, and creativity. In a memo dated December 18, 1941, Markel conceded that the puzzle deserved space in the paper, considering what was happening elsewhere in the world, and that readers might need something to occupy themselves during blackouts.
“You can’t think of your troubles while solving a crossword.” “I don’t think I have to sell you on the increased demand for this type of pastime in an increasingly worried world,” wrote Margaret Farrar, the first crossword editor of The Times, in a memo to Lester Markel, the Sunday editor, after the Pearl Harbor attack. So, what changed their minds regarding crosswords? The article goes on to call crosswords “a primitive form of mental exercise” and compare their value to that of so-called brain teasers that should be solved by schoolchildren in 30 seconds or less. “Scarcely recovered from the form of temporary madness that made so many people pay enormous prices for mahjongg sets, about the same persons now are committing the same sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern, more or less complex.” Truth be told, they didn’t think much of crosswords back then. What took The New York Times so long to catch on? Simon & Schuster published The Cross-Word Puzzle Book, edited by Margaret Farrar, in 1924. (The daily feature as we know it wouldn’t come into effect until 1950.)īut, you might be thinking to yourself, Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross” first appeared in the New York World in 1913. On February 15, 1942, The New York Times ran its first Sunday edition crossword. Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of The New York Times publishing its first crossword, and I thought I’d delve into NYT crossword history a bit to commemorate this event!
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