Arthur Wynne
Arthur Wynne (1871–1945) was the British-born inventor of the crossword puzzle.
Early Life
Arthur Wynne was born on June 22, 1871 in Liverpool, England. He immigrated into the United States on June 6, 1891 at the age of 19.[1]
Career
Arthur Wynne settled for a time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked on the Pittsburg Press newspaper[2] and played the violin in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra[3]. He later moved to New York City and worked on the New York World newspaper. He is best-known for the invention of the crossword puzzle in 1913, when he was a resident of Cedar Grove, New Jersey[4].
Wynne created the page of puzzles for the Fun section of the Sunday edition of the New York World. For the December 21, 1913 edition, he introduced a puzzle with a diamond shape and a hollow center, the letters F-U-N already being filled in. He called it a "Word-Cross Puzzle".[5]
Although Wynne's invention was based on earlier puzzle forms, such as the word "diamond", he introduced a number of innovations (e.g. the use of horizontal and vertical lines to create boxes for solvers to enter letters). He subsequently pioneered the use of black squares in a symmetrical arrangement to separate words in rows and columns. With the exception of the numbering scheme, the form of Wynne's "Word-Cross" puzzles is that used for modern crosswords.[5]
A few weeks after the first "Word-Cross" appeared, the name of the puzzle was change to "Cross-Word" as a result of a typesetting error[4]. Wynne's puzzles have been known as "crosswords" ever since.
Later Life and Death
Arthur Wynne became a naturalized US citizen in the 1920s[6]. He died in Clearwater, Florida on January 14, 1945[3].
References
- ^ Declaration of Intention [to become a naturalized US citizen] dated March 21, 1917, New Jersey State Archives
- ^ Arthur Wynne, o Desconhecido Ilustre
- ^ a b U.P. obituary dated January 15, 1945
- ^ a b Jaegar, Philip Edward (2000). Cedar Grove. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0-7385-0452-1
- ^ a b Augarde, Tony (2003). The Oxford Guide to Word Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866264-5.
- ^ U.S. Census 1920, 1930