Friday, December 21, 2007

Passionate for Puzzles

It was on this day in 1913 that the very first crossword puzzle appeared in The New York World. It was the invention of journalist Arthur Wynne, who called it a "Word-Cross," but the typesetter made a mistake and printed the game as "Cross-Word" and the name stuck. London's puzzle in The Daily Telegraph for May 1944 is possibly the most famous crossword in history. Just before D-Day, the puzzle ran with the highly classified operation code names Utah, Omaha, Overlord, Mulberry, and Neptune as the answers to some of the clues. The incident was later investigated by England's department of Military Intelligence and ruled as a coincidence.

I'll have my ever-present puzzle book with me tonight as I wait to go onstage for the first of three Holiday Pops concerts.

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