There are over 10,000 unique clues to solve as well as dozens of quests to complete and trophies to collect! Explore a giant grid of over 350 crossword puzzles. The classic puzzle enjoyed by millions of players worldwide. Reversals involve reversing the letters of the clue to get the answer. The reverse of “era” is “are,” for example. Make a first pass in one direction, usually starting with 1 Across, and solve the most obvious clues first. For instance, solve for fill-in-the-blank questions first, as they tend to be more obvious than others. Will Shortz, the famed crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times, begins his career. The next few decades are sometimes referred to by crossword fans as “the Shortz era.”

A puzzle by Jeremiah Farrell published in The New York Times on the day of the U.S. presidential election is a Shrodinger puzzle; 39 Across, “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!),” can be either BILL CLINTON ELECTED or BOB DOLE ELECTED, and the rest of the puzzle works either way. The world’s largest published crossword, according to Guinness World Records, is published in Japan. It has 66,666 clues and measures 12 square miles. Master “crosswordese.” Learn some of the most commonly used crossword answers. See if you can fit any of the “crosswordiest” words, or words not found in everyday speech but often used in crosswords, in your puzzle. The World’s Sunday crossword begins to spread to other newspapers. The Pittsburgh Press publishes their first crosswords this year. Consider the all-important theme. Crossword writers frequently use themes or even tell stories with their clever puzzles. For instance, if the theme is ballet, an easy answer to “point of pain for dancers” might be “toe.”During the 1920s, the phenomenon of crossword puzzles boomed, with libraries being stormed by people searching for dictionaries and encyclopedias to solve the word puzzle games. In 1925, Simon & Schuster, a publishing company, released the first book of crossword puzzles. Crossword types Containers imply that you’ll need to insert a word inside of another word, usually indicated in the clue by words like “within” or “surrounding.” The New Yorker’s first-ever issue contains the observation that crossword-solvers have swarmed into the subway and L trains. Matt Gaffney likes to start with the theme and then use a divide-and-conquer approach to create his crosswords.

In 1890, another type of crossword puzzle was developed by an Italian, Giuseppe Airoldi. The crossword puzzle included both horizontal and vertical clues, while the puzzle was a simple four-by-four grid with no shaded squares. Place the letter tiles from each column into the correct squares on the grid to spell out a famous quotation!

During the 19th century in England, crosswords became famous for children as they were printed in puzzle books and other periodicals. However, in 1913, Arthur Wynne, a soon-to-be-famous journalist from Liverpool, published a “word-cross” puzzle in the New York World newspaper.