Beginnings

This introductory chapter will not attempt to give a detailed historical account of the coming of crossword puzzles. Such an account would be alien to the purpose of this book, which is the ambitious one—perhaps too ambitious—of trying to arrive at a system of principles which can make the crossword more enjoyable and rewarding to solvers, whether they be among the millions of desultory solvers, content sometimes to fill in only part of a puzzle to pass an odd half-hour, or among the many thousands of real enthusiasts, determined to reach a full solution, whether of an easy or of a difficult puzzle. The main point I want to make is that the system will be just the same for all types of solver, though they may not all realise it: its first principle will be that the clue-writer’s aim must be never to leave the solver with a possible answer in his mind that he is afraid to write in because it doesn’t, for some reason, seem a fully satisfactory or certain answer, only to find, when he sees the solution, that it was the right answer. That aim will not be achieved unless the composer becomes an unwavering adherent of a principle laid down for clue-writers long ago by Afrit of the Listener: “I need not mean what I say, but I must say what I mean.” Of this much more anon, in its proper place, but our first paragraph cannot be complete without it.

Of very early crosswords I shall not say very much, simply because their clues were all definitions; and while I know there are still plenty of solvers who are satisfied to fill in a diagram by writing down the answers to definitions, the majority of solvers nowadays demand, I am sure, something more ingenious to pit their wits against, something which is provided by what is normally called the cryptic clue, whose coming we shall discuss in the next chapter. In the United States, the original source of this, as of so many other ingenious things, it is, I believe, curiously enough, otherwise: though the crossword puzzle there is over fifty years old, definition clues are still the normal thing. There must be, however, voices there crying in the wilderness, for I have some solvers there, as in many other parts of the world, of my Ximenes puzzles, and I know that many other British puzzles, with cryptic clues, are solved there too.

It was in 1913 that an American journalist named Arthur Wynne, who had earlier emigrated from Liverpool (so that we may at least claim that the inventor of crosswords was originally English) constructed several specimen puzzles and submitted them to the Editor of the New York Sunday World. He liked the idea and ran a crossword in his paper for about ten years before anyone else followed suit.

The next step came in 1923. In that year two young men lately down from Harvard, Mr Robert Simon and Mr Lincoln Schuster, compiled a book of crosswords in New York, containing fifty simple puzzles. Three-quarters of a million copies were sold within a few weeks of publication at about 5s. 6d. each, so that the venture was a very profitable one. Soon newspapers from New York to San Francisco began publishing puzzles daily. As far as Great Britain is concerned, there have been several claims and counter-claims on the subject of the crossword’s introduction. Some records are muddled or self-contradictory, others were lost in the last war; and whenever the files of papers or magazines have failed to survive their moves to different premises, the memories of present or former members of their staffs have become vague and historically untrustworthy. We have only included here what is based on reliable evidence. On 2 November 1924, about a year after the appearance of the American book, the Sunday Express published one of Mr Arthur Wynne’s puzzles, with certain alterations. This puzzle was one of a small batch offered by Mr Wynne to Mr C. W. Shepherd, a member of a syndicate known as “Newspaper Features”, who in turn sold half a dozen to the Sunday Express. As it happened, the first puzzle chosen for publication contained a word with an American spelling, and in order to eliminate it, Mr Shepherd was forced to make a drastic reconstruction of the diagram: so this puzzle must be called the joint work of Mr Wynne and Mr Shepherd. Solvers familiar with the more sophisticated puzzles of today, with their cryptic clues and their almost infinite variety of block-patterns or bar-arrangements, will no doubt be amused at this modest little effort, which was the first British crossword and startled and delighted the British public some forty years ago. It entitles Mr Wynne, who died in January 1945, to be regarded as not only the inventor of the crossword, but also as its introducer to this country.

Here it is:

Others were quick to adopt this new idea, and soon all the popular papers here had their own daily or weekly crosswords , and when, on 1 February 1930, The Times began to print a puzzle as a regular feature, the crossword’s future, as well as its respectability, was assured. In the first enthusiasm generated by the Wynne-type puzzles, solvers of all classes enjoyed the friendly rivalry of competing with each other in their speed of solution. Sir Josiah Stamp, a brilliant economist and a Director of the Bank of England, began the craze by claiming, in a letter to the Editor, to have solved a puzzle in fifty minutes. Sir Austen Chamberlain, at one time Foreign Secretary and Nobel Peace Prize winner, soon bettered this time with forty-one minutes, and others in turn announced gradually decreasing times, until one learned man asserted that he normally completed his daily crossword while his breakfast egg was boiling: he must surely have liked his eggs, but not his puzzles, hard.

Very soon after the establishment of these straightforward puzzles came the type of crossword which deliberately introduced the possibility of alternative answers to many of its clues, and which offered large money prizes for those solutions which agreed most nearly with those arrived at by a panel of judges. In the late 1920s — the peak period for competitions of this kind — the weekly value of prizes offered was between £20,000 and £25,000. With these crosswords, which are more or less sheer gambles, we have no concern in this book.

A further early development, still far removed from the modern crossword but at least a matter of skill rather than of luck, was the series of crosswords, each one harder than last, forming the basis of a competition with a large money prize, intended to go on until an ultimate winner emerged. Perhaps the most famous of these competitions, which older solvers of today may remember, appeared in the Daily News in 1925: the first prize was £5,000. The first puzzle was a very easy one: there were more than 100,000 entries (entry fee, 1s. per time). At this point Gilbert Frankau, the novelist, was called in as composer to complete the process of elimination. This he did, in four more rounds. The third of these demanded a knowledge of French, Spanish, German, Italian and higher mathematics: after this there were still over 300 competitors left. His fourth puzzle, of which I have been able to obtain a copy, was not wholly solved by anyone; the prize was shared by a syndicate of London solvers, who presumably had the fewest letters wrong. To show the almost incredible tortuosity that was resorted to, and to preserve what may be regarded as a historic work, this puzzle, cumbersome as it is, is appended. Perhaps there may still be gluttons for punishment who like to see how much of it they can solve.

It may be appropriate to add, with regard to competitions of this sort, that I don’t think the crossword lends itself to knockout competitions. The persistence and skill of the best solvers is such that only by unfairness can they, if many of them compete, be reduced to a single winner. Sheer difficulty in itself, unless it is difficulty of an ingenious sort, bringing legitimate satisfaction to the solver when it is conquered, is hardly a merit.

Before going on from this brief excursion into the early days of crosswords to consider their later development, it may be worth while to recount a war-time crossword incident, which gives an example of the unexpected problems that can discomfit the crossword composer. Shortly before D-Day in 1944, the late L. S. Dawe, who was the chief crossword-setter of the Daily Telegraph, was visited by representatives of MI5 and subjected to a rigorous examination. He had innocently used in some recent puzzles four words which happened to fit in his diagrams and which were, as everyday words, as familiar to his solvers as to himself. The offending words were mulberry, Pluto, Neptune, and overlord — each of them a highly confidential code-word connected with impending war operations. He was fortunately able to convince MI5 in the end that his use of these words was purely fortuitous, and that if the very first word with which he had started each of those diagrams had been different, probably not one of these code-words would have entered either his mind or his puzzles!

ACROSS

1. Initialise a father.
202. By adding hydrogen here, help the British Dyestuffs Corporation.
303. Full of hops.
404. Curtail a formula.
5. Might describe the condition of a rustic wooer.
6. A poetess.
7. A make.
8. The guns of Trafalgar.
9. Curtail and decapitate an enormous oven.
10. Reverse one part of a pulley block.
11. One way out of the harem.
12. Once decapitate and thrice curtail the race of a man whose skin might have been saved had he been able to exercise 11 across.
13. Decapitate and curtail something which also answers to clue 44 across.
14. Curtail and decapitate that which apparently did not fall.
15. Twice curtail an exiguous meadow.
16. Two code letters found on a certain brand of advertised cigarettes.
17. Reverse either three-fourths or three-fifths of a neurosis.
18. Add one and make a tragedy.
19. Curtail and decapitate a diminutive.
20. Her husband’s initials were J. R.
21. Found under the table.
22. Reverse two words which might describe the influence of several specimens on the judgment of a mining engineer.
23. First reverse, then twice decapitate an idler.
24. Look for this on the end of a blowpipe.
25. Reverse one thorough paced scoundrel.
26. Reverse something made of chestnuts.
27. First reverse, then twice decapitate a city bossed by a bull.
28. Might describe hawthorn.
29. Curtail a Saracen’s stronghold.
30. Curtail a word associated with mice.
31. First reverse, then invert the Erst two letters of a knowledge invaluable to Mr. Royce.
32. Ask your tailor about this.
33. Found under expensive cigar boxes.
34. Could also be initialised as u, Q, F, E, G, D.
35. See house agents’ advertisements.
36. Start an ode.
37. Curtail one who would have been better shingled.
38. The fore-runner of the land girl.
39. Twice curtail that which put behind 72 across conveys social reform.
40. By decapitation and the alteration of one letter, make print vocal.
41. One of the lacertilia.
42. Reverse the first half of a hill.
43. A form of promotion.
44. Dished up with vegetables.
45. A female.
46. Add a couple and make a row.
47. To surround.
48. Curtail a village. 4
49. Set our fathers singing.
50. Curtail one who goes veiled. 4
51. Made men cry, “Bring out your dead”.
52. A relative of Peeping Tom. 4
53. One who entered on behalf of the House.
54. Curtail a river.
55. Might have been the first two words of a historic 4 South African cable.
56. Remove two letters from contracts. 4
57. and 57a. By combining these two make a lark.
58. Decapitate a doubtful beautifier.
59. Reverse a form of communication. . .
60. Two-thirds of a military unit.
61. Deduct an aromatic liquid from an aromatic plant.
62. B.C. three thousand two hundred and sixty.
63. Gives knights nightmare.
64. Reverse projections.
65. The last of the fairies.
66. Curtail an inhabitant of the Gebbi.
67. Singularise and reverse a reversal.
68. First decapitate, then reverse a property vital to a play.
69. Twice beheaded a fearsome monster.
70. Nice nicknames (reversed) for a brace of peeresses.
71. Once decapitate and three curtail a business which is also an art.
72. See 39 across.
73. A chorus.

DOWN

1. Title of a poem.
40. Seven score.
55. Reverse that which makes men distrust legality.
2. The novice oarsman’s friend.
3. Halve a frisky lady.
4. Reverse a process Biblically connected with a beard.
5. An appellation of intimacy.
606. Would apply to 21 across.
7. Reverse a sign of decomposition.
38. Reverse a name.
39. A great handicap.
8. The answer the doctor made to his nagging wife.
9. Makes H. G. Wells see red.
10. Reverse an inflammation.
11. Reverse whom you curse.
12. Thrice curtail a trade-mark.
13. Reverse that which has as bad an effect as 9 down.
14. Curtail a cereal.
15. Cross.
16. Reverse a revenue payer.
202. Reverse a patient carrier.
203. A racecourse.
59. Depenultimise an African tribe.
204. The first two letters of 303 across.
205. Stops “fans” fanning.
206. More trouble for H. G. Wells.
44. Reverse a newspaper suggestion about 46 across.
207. Half a fruit.
208. Appeal to peelers.
209. Leslie Henson does this.
210. Reverse an obsolescent individual.
211. Several Zevs.
212. What the Yorkshirernan said when they offered him ginger beer.
213. Reverse, then four times decapitate a war policy.
214. The day to which no one looks forward.
215. Reverse a flapper’s dream.
216. Curtail that which tallies with 40 across. .
217. Initialise and reverse a preserver (?) of morality.
57a. A monopoly.
218. Reverse a headman.
303. Reverse a phrase which might be used by a Channel swimmer.
304. Halve embellished.
305. Stand a cup on its rim.
306. Halve a cake.
307. Bad in the lung, worse in the brain.
308. Deduct first an American animal, then an English interjection from a barometrical term. Then reverse your result.
309. Add a conveyance and make a spectacle.
310. One of these rarely obtains 311 down.
311. Rarely obtained by 310 down.
312. Reverse a knight.
313. Another Wells.
314. Give this to your enemies.
316. Curtail and reverse a provider of transport.
316. Reverse the last two letters of 55 across.
317. Reverse three primal liquids.
404. First deduct the opposition from, then reverse a word whose original significance is precisely the opposite of opposition.
405. Sets Chinamen gobbling.
406. The wrong way to pluralise some Orientals.
37. The gardener’s friend.
407. Not the Southern’s, we hope.
408. First reverse then decapitate, the forerunner of 55 down.
409. Add the beginning and the end of 65 across to the ultimate of 1 across and the penultimate of 71 across.
410. A reformer.
51. Curtail a kicker.
411. Was used for keening.
412. Reverse a sign of utility,
47. Initialise a story title.
413. One of the things that is his.
414. Reverse the first half of a Swinburnian town.
415. Reverse and add a couple to 317 down.
415a. Voyage, and learn this.
416. Take the last four letters of 406 down and turn them into the past.
417. Never wrote vers libre.
418. Singularise, without authority, symbols of a jolly evening.
418a. The typist’s curse
419. The largest inhabitants of a South American Republic.