I have not been a regular blogger and that is one of the reasons why sometimes feel very guilty to the point that I have even thought of selling it off. But as I had started it long back, and due to some sort of sentimental value attached – of which too I am not sure – till now I have not gathered the courage to sell it. I am sure I might earn cool money from this!!

So, just for the sake of keeping the blog going, I am penning down some thoughts about something which I wanted to share for long.

I have always been intrigued by crosswords, puzzles, and quizzes since my childhood. I am sure most of the people who might happen to read this blog are also interested in solving crosswords. Though the two things do not have a direct correlation but generally people who read a lot also like to exercise their minds playing such mind games. It is not always true that only some brainy exclusive people solve crosswords or quizzes. You might also come across a security guard or a taxi driver solving the same. It basically depends on the interest of the person. And the fact remains that it is a good way to pass time. And now-a-days Sudoku has caught everyone’s attention. I tried to solve it but could solve only the easiest one. Then somehow I gave up. But I think even that was enough for me to feel good. At least I learnt a new thing!

In recent times, the kids have a lot of other activities to engage themselves, but still I suppose every child must have experienced the fun to solve a puzzle or be a winner of a treasure hunt. It is same with the adults also. A sudden gush of positive energy and a sense of achievement is associated with such games as with any other game. As the saying goes, there is a child in each one of us, so it is good to express ourselves that way sometimes.

I would like to share an article which I found on the Internet which describes how the first crossword was born. The article goes like this: “Arthur Wynne had the job of devising the weekly puzzle page for Fun, the eight-page comic section of the New York World. When he devised what he called a Word-cross for the Christmas 1913 edition, published on 21 December he could have no idea that he would be starting a worldwide craze.

The puzzle page had previously featured plenty of word squares, rebuses, hidden words, anagrams and connect-the-dots drawings. For this edition Wynne decided he would have something new. He sketched out a diamond-shaped grid, wrote FUN, the name of the comic section, across the top squares, and started filling in the rest of the grid. He numbered the squares at the start and end of each word, and wrote definition clues for the words he had filled in. The puzzle was printed with the instruction to the solver: “Fill in the small squares with words which agree with the following definitions.”. Thus was the crossword born.

The new puzzle became popular immediately, and continued to appear every week. One change was that after a few weeks the name was changed from Word-cross to Cross-word. After experimenting with different shapes, including a circular puzzle, Wynne eventually settled on a rectangular pattern. It was not until some time later that the hyphen was dropped, and the Cross-word became a Crossword.

From the very first, readers began sending in crosswords they had composed, and by February 1914, Wynne was regularly using these readers’ submissions. There was a problem, however: the weekly crossword was plagued by typesetting errors, and as a result it was decided to drop the crossword. An immediate howl of outrage came from the readers, and the crossword was reinstated after an absence of only one week.

Surprisingly, despite their popularity, crosswords appeared nowhere else but the New York World. Then in 1924, a couple of newly-qualified graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism, called Dick Simon and Lincoln Schuster, set up in business as publishers. Looking for something to publish, they settled on a book of the puzzles from the New York World. This book was an immediate massive hit, and launched the crossword craze worldwide.” So this is the story behind the birth of crossword.

Coming back to solving these games, there are websites with forums which offer excellent help on how to play the game. In addition, you can also choose to form a group and the time in which you finish determines your rank within the team. I am sure, though I have not explored that there might be sites which offer help for the beginners in the games like chess and bridge. Internet sure has tons of information which one can use for fruitful purposes.

I was reading another article on the Internet about a Crossword Compiler that has been invented which will help you create puzzles, print out, and publish them too. Isn’t that great! Being a part of the learning industry, I think that this is quite an invention. Crosswords and puzzles are considered to be the games which have the highest attention grabbing capacity. I still remember how in one of my previous company some of us racked our brains to create a crossword on our own. Our boss really wanted us to do something unique. I must say that the e-learning industry must be all game for it. It is a good way to judge whether the learner has absorbed the content or not. To begin with it grabs the attention of the learner, tests the retention power of the learner, builds confidence in the learner that he/she has achieved something.

So next time you don’t feel like reading a novel, watching a movie, or going out shopping pick up a pen and start solving a crossword. Isn’t it a wonderful idea to save on your expenses ;-).