Saturday 21 December 2013

Century of crosswords

On this day, the Solstice, exactly 100 years ago, Arthur Wynne designed a word-cross puzzle that was published in the New York World. It was the sudoku of its day and the idea was widely propagated until just about every newspaper in at least the English speaking world will include one somewhere in  its pages.  I've made up a few of these in my time, for events or for the hell of it.  The Easter egg hunts with which I tormented my children owe a lot to a lifetime to doing crosswords - my mother taught me the basic conventions of British-English cryptic clues before I reached double digits.
The Arthur Wynne Memorial Word-Cross
01ac. 1781 Planet            01dn. Closed
04ac. Primary virtue         02dn. Unspecified place
09ac. 8/9 water              03dn. Extraterrestrial
10ac. One going forward      05dn. 940 Lenok submarine
12ac. R-O-R' chemical        06dn. Sturm und ?
13ac. Our 4th closest relly  07dn. Joe Kraus 1994 startup
15ac. Our day will come!     08dn. S (aa)
16ac. The only home we have  11dn. Phoenician deity
17ac. Sinaasappel.nl         14dn. ENSG00000100503
22ac. The universe of Cthulu 18dn. 42
24ac. Causes Lesch-Nyhan     19dn. from GAG or GAA
27ac. Khmer temple           20dn. palpable, material
28ac. Radio reflecting layer 21dn. El Asturiano
31ac. Found '94 by Wm Ramsey 23dn. Tashkent IATA
32ac. Remembered             25dn. diff.betw. proton/neutron
33ac. Graphite and diamond   26dn. Sharp medical journal
34ac. American hormone       29dn. Cosy for inuit
35ac. Shipworm               30dn.
Ειρήνη Σαρανταπήχαινα
Answers on New Year's Day (if I remember). Solstice: things are getting brighter from now on.