The first modern crossword was published on December 21, 112 years ago, in 1913, on Funthe Sunday supplement of New York World. The invention of crossword puzzleas they were called in the United States, is attributed to Arthur Wynne (1871-1945), the editor of the puzzle section of the American weekly. At the time they were already widespread word squaressimpler squares of words stuck together, Wynne’s idea was to, in addition to inserting the black squares, associate the questions with the words that the reader had to answer to complete the game.
It was in 1924 that the phenomenon exploded with the first issue dedicated entirely to this pastime, the The Cross Word Puzzle Book. The fashion also reached Europe and Italy shortly afterwards. In our peninsula the first “Crossword Riddle” (the cast of the crossword puzzle) appears on the third page of the Domenica del Corriere – the weekly supplement of the Corriere della Sera born in 1899 – on 8 February 1925.
As an original paragraph from the time states, the passion was collective and had driven the whole world crazy so much so that “In London, in the ballrooms, couples are invited to solve large crossword puzzles without stopping dancing“.
The first Italian crossword appears rather complicated, as it did not present the in-depth questions we are used to now but only a vague word by definition “Mammal”, “Belva”, “Easy”, “Gentle”.
Try to solve it without going into the article (there are solutions).
In these few lines alone we have used various terms as synonyms to refer to this puzzle game, but where do these names come from? In Italy it was initially called English “puzzle” indicating an “enigma”, a “riddle” or a “puzzle”. However, the linguistic autarky of Fascism prohibited some foreignisms – words of foreign origin. Thus the terms “crosswords”, “crosswords” and, above all, “crosswords” and “crosswords” became widespread.
The wording “crosswords” established itself thanks to Giorgio Sisini’s Settimana Enigmistica (from 1932), while the term “Crossword” it was minted in 1925 by Valentino Bompiani and Enrico Piceni for the Italian equivalent of Cross Word Puzzle Book by Mondadori. The two discarded options such as Italianized púzzelo or chiasmatògrifo And staurogriff and they chose “crossword” because it sounded good and, above all, it evoked the “torment” (cruci-) of the solver who cannot find the answer.
Precisely to put an end to this “suffering”, the solution to the first Italian riddle was also published in the Domenica del Corriere, on 1 March 1925. If you have already solved it or have raised the white flag, you can find them below (even us at Geopop took us a while to solve it):
At the time, the game also offered prizes: whoever sent the greatest number of exact solutions within three months or suggested new words or patterns would receive rewards of up to 3,000 lire.
