{"id":149679,"date":"2020-12-25T13:00:01","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T18:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=149679"},"modified":"2020-12-11T16:55:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T21:55:37","slug":"a-brief-history-of-word-games-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/12\/25\/a-brief-history-of-word-games-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief History of Word Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2020. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_143744\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/crossword_puzzle_with_lady_in_black_coat-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-143744\" class=\"size-large wp-image-143744\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/crossword_puzzle_with_lady_in_black_coat-2-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/crossword_puzzle_with_lady_in_black_coat-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/crossword_puzzle_with_lady_in_black_coat-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/crossword_puzzle_with_lady_in_black_coat-2-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/crossword_puzzle_with_lady_in_black_coat-2.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-143744\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Paulina Olowska, <em>Crossword Puzzle with Lady in Black Coat<\/em>, 2014<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When I began to research the history of crosswords for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/561343\/thinking-inside-the-box-by-adrienne-raphel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">my recent book on the subject<\/a>, I was sort of shocked to discover that they weren\u2019t invented until 1913. The puzzle seemed so deeply ingrained in our lives that I figured it must have been around for centuries\u2014I envisioned the empress Livia in the famous garden room in her villa, serenely filling in her <em>cruciverborum <\/em>each morning\u00ad\u00ad. But in reality, the crossword is a recent invention, born out of desperation. Editor Arthur Wynne at the <em>New York World<\/em> needed something to fill space in the Christmas edition of his paper\u2019s <small>FUN<\/small> supplement, so he took advantage of new technology that could print blank grids cheaply and created a diamond-shaped set of boxes, with clues to fill in the blanks, smack in the center of <small>FUN<\/small>. Nearly overnight, the \u201cWord-Cross Puzzle\u201d went from a space-filling ploy to the most popular feature of the page.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the crossword didn\u2019t arise from nowhere. Ever since we\u2019ve had language, we\u2019ve played games with words. Crosswords are the Punnett square of two long-standing strands of word puzzles: word squares, which demand visual logic to understand the puzzle but aren\u2019t necessarily using deliberate deception; and riddles, which use wordplay to misdirect the solver but don\u2019t necessarily have any kind of graphic component to work through.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/23\/a-brief-history-of-word-games\/\">Read more &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since we\u2019ve had language, we\u2019ve played games with words.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68282],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2020"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized 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