London “has gone crazy”said Antonio Luis. The “new fever” suffered by England had become 1925 into «An overwhelming torture», According to the ABC correspondent. And it had not been caused by any viruses from China, no. There was … Arrived from the United States on a kind of chess board, with black paintings arranged so that they formed geometric figures and numbered white boxes. «People get rid of their brains trying to imagine words that do not knowgo to bookstores to provide encyclopedias, dictionaries, lexics and thesaurus, and even consult hospitals, museums, institutes and scientific corporations »in their eagerness to solve the clues of the fashion hobby.
The first ‘Cross Words’ (‘Crosswords’) had been created in 1913 by Arthur Wynne in the Sunday supplement of the ‘New York World’ and reaped so much success that in the early 20s the main US newspapers had opened a fixed hole between their pages to the puzzle. He soon jumped to the London newspapers, who organized crossword competitions, with considerable awards and convoluted words.
The journalist of this house was attesting to the scope of the passion unleashed by the crosswords. «In these days they have phoned countless friends to ask about The name of a ‘Spanish dance’ or ‘a Spanish currency’ or something like that And they have not left me alone until I provided a voice with the number of words necessary to adjust to the white squares of the board, ”said Antonio Luis.
The first crossword published in Spain on March 22, 1925, in the magazine ‘Black and White’
ABC
His chronicle did not go unnoticed for Torcuato Luca de Tena, always willing to incorporate the latest innovations. A week later, ‘Black and white‘, which seemed predestined by its name, transplanted the’ puzzle of crossed words’ to Spain, with an instruction manual. “Do the first tesses with pencil”advised the same journalist who made it known, because the last definition of an optimistic was: “The man who tries to solve a crossed words puzzle with a fountain pen.” Among the 70 tracks to solve it was a mysterious ‘all men have …’, or ‘everyone takes them.’ A river was not missing, this time American, not an Italian or Argentine word, so that also ‘black and white’ readers would ask their friends.
For a friend from Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, a gentleman who tried to please others, became such a torment this type of questions published by an ad and hired the most skilled fans to provide the solutions to the crosswords of the morning newspapers. «It is distributing words, when necessary, with the kindness of those who distribute cigarettes or chocolates. Its social charm increased immensely, ”said the writer in his fun column.
An inhabitant of the Fiyi Islands, a faithful reader of ‘Times’, would have grateful. In 1966 he wrote a letter to the magazine to announce with jubilation that he had finally finished a crossword published in 1932. “We knew there were difficult crosswords – commented a columnist – but but No perpetual crosswords». One of Robert M. Stilgenbauer, with more than 6,000 definitions, was so difficult for anyone to solve it.
The most famous crossword remains, however, the one published in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ shortly before the Normandy landing, which contained the word ‘overlord’, a name of the day operation D. Scotland Yard investigated it as a case of espionage, but it was said that it had been a coincidence.
Maybe that was also an innocent entertainment. Not an ingenious stratagema to make fun of censorship or a ‘strategic fun’ to prevent people from thinking about serious issues, as Antonio Azpeitúa joked in 1925, shortly after the king of hobbies arrived in Spain to stay. He was not right because the game has also managed to distract more than one. They tell the senator that in 1983 he was ‘caught’ by the cameras filling ABC’s crosswords during a plenary session.
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