Crossword puzzles are the most entertaining form of pastime from time immemorial. Each and every newspaper has a crossword puzzle in some corner of a page. A square grid comprising black and white squares with cryptic clues keeps you engaged for quite a long time, scratching your head armed with a dictionary and looking for word clues shows that you are a real crossword maniac. Quite surprisingly, some people buy a newspaper just for solving those puzzles!

Crossword puzzle is the most popular word puzzle in the whole world and is played by around 50 million people each day! It is so popular that April 18 is celebrated as crossword day and even the US postal service issued a postage stamp on January 3, 1998, to commemorate the first crossword puzzle. The history of a crossword puzzle is quite fascinating as well. The first crossword puzzle FUN was created by journalist Arthur Wynne and got published in December 21,1913 edition of New York World. After the success of this, Simon and Schuster published the world’s first book of crossword puzzles in the 1920’s.this publication resulted in a craze that gripped every American and slowly became popular in the minds of the American population. The popularity reached to such an extent that even clothing and jewelry adorned with crossword puzzles became the latest fashion.

Crosswords gradually have come a long way from Arthur Wynne’s Fun. At present there are several variations that exist, among these the quick and the cryptic crosswords are the most popular forms. Cryptic crosswords are the most challenging because the clues are mini-puzzles by themselves. While popular word puzzles like scrabble and upwards are based on the concept of the crossword puzzle, Sudoku, the number puzzle is considered to be numerical form of the crossword. Some mystery novels have featured crossword puzzles like author Parnell halls series, known as the puzzle lady series, where readers have to solve a crossword puzzle to identify a criminal and solve a probable murder mystery. Ruth Rendell’s one across two down also features crossword puzzles.

Due to its popularity A few enterprising individuals have taken the construction of crossword puzzles as a career, as the demand for crosswords grew. These individuals known as the cruciverbalists construct crosswords as a career. Notable crossword constructors include Merle Reagle and Will Shortz.But today computer have made the construction of crosswords easier. Popular software programs include Crossword weaver which is the first patented crossword programmme, crossword compiler, crossword construction kit etc.

There are various benefits of scratching your head to solve a puzzle. According to a research solving crossword puzzles slow down the ageing process. While you solve one, your grey muscles are kept in shape and help you think more logically, while some found out that seniors who regularly work on these puzzles are likely to suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological illnesses.