What is a crossword puzzle and where did it come from

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

Many adults and children are very fond of solving crossword puzzles, but few people know what a crossword puzzle really is and where it came from. This article will tell about it.

What is a crossword puzzle

What is a crossword puzzle? A crossword is usually called a game with words. This game is the most common and intellectual. If you literally translate the word "crossword" from English, you get two independent words: a cross and words. Thus, translating into Russian, we get a cross of words or a crossword. From this we can conclude that the crossword puzzle has its own distinctive property - it consists of the intersection of words. And his main rule is that each letter should be written separately from the rest, in its own cell.

Summing up, we found out that the crossword puzzle has its own distinctive properties and its own compilation rules. But in many newspapers and magazines, completely different tasks are called a crossword puzzle, not related to the intersection of words, or even not related to guessing words at all. And this means that such "crossword puzzles" were invented by illiterate compilers, and such publications themselves cannot be consideredquality.

So, we figured out what a crossword puzzle is in its classic version, then we'll look at what crossword puzzles are.

Types of crosswords

Sometimes it's hard to figure out what a crossword puzzle is based on its name alone. The classification of crossword puzzles by their geographical name is more understandable: for example, a crossword puzzle can be American, English, Russian, Scandinavian or Japanese. Such crosswords have their own rules, which are the same in almost all publications, and they are always solved according to the same principle.

But it also happens that by name it is difficult to understand what kind of crossword puzzle it is. For example, the tea word has nothing to do with tea or Chinese Chinatown. This is a linear crossword puzzle, where words should not intersect, as in a classic crossword puzzle, but they are arranged in one line. In this case, the last letter of the last word is the beginning of the next one.

Another type of crossword is the cyclocrossword. It also has a special structure: all the words here have the same number of letters and are arranged around the task.

So, what is a crossword puzzle, we figured it out, now let's look at the history of the appearance of a crossword puzzle.

Where did crossword puzzles come from

The earliest mention of the crossword puzzle is considered to be a plate with a pattern very reminiscent of a crossword puzzle. It was found during excavations of an ancient settlement in England and dates back to the 3rd-4th century.

Modern crosswords appeared relatively recently - about a century ago. But where exactly they appeared is a very controversial issue. On theToday, Great Britain, the USA and South Africa dispute the right to be considered the birthplace of crossword puzzles. Each country has its own history of the appearance of the first crossword puzzle. For example, the inhabitants of England believe that the first crossword puzzles began to be published by the London newspaper The Times in the middle of the 19th century. And in the USA they believe that they have printed crossword puzzles since 1913 in the New York World newspaper.

Residents of South Africa tell a very romantic story of the appearance of the first crossword puzzle: they were invented by a prisoner who drew his puzzles on the stone floor of the cell. The cellmates approved this novelty, it was subsequently transferred to paper and sent by mail to the newspaper.

Crossword in a child's life

What is a crossword puzzle in a child's life? Teachers answer this question unambiguously: this is an intellectual game that helps develop memory, teaches a culture of thinking, and teaches to look for missing information. While solving a crossword puzzle, the child consolidates the knowledge gained, and also during this, active memorization works for him, which helps to effectively learn the material.

When choosing crossword puzzles for children, you need to take into account the child's age capabilities, only then solving a crossword puzzle will benefit him, facilitate further learning, and also become an exciting and useful activity.