New York World puzzles of the 1910s taught us to go across and down
Crosswords fill numbered white squares with words that cross under clues. Modern-style grids took off in the New York World in the 1910s. American weekday Times puzzles often run 15×15; weekends balloon to 21 or more. Builders—cruciverbalists—usually enforce rotational symmetry and software-aided fills.
The 1970s coinage cruciverbalist blends Latin cross and word. Cryptic styles thrive in Britain; language-specific variants span the globe. Themes land first, then the skeleton, then clue wit.
American clues are mostly straight definitions, though a bare definition may fit several answers, and clue and answer must match in tense, number and degree, so Traveled on horseback yields RODE rather than RIDE. Fill-in-the-blank clues such as _____ Boleyn for ANNE are usually the easiest entry points, while a closing question mark flags wordplay, as when Grateful? turns out to be ASHES. Answers are written in capitals, so a proper name's initial can be checked by a crossing word.
Because every letter in an American grid is checked, many entries are not dictionary words. Clues signal abbreviations, foreign words or variant spellings, compass points like NNW turn up often, Roman numeral sums appear, so IV times III gives XII, and partial answers such as PSAND from Mind your Ps and Qs are allowed, along with colloquial fills like WHATS UP or AS IF. A standard weekday grid usually carries three to five long theme entries linked by a shared idea, pun or category; Sarah Keller's New York Times puzzle of 26 April 2005, edited by Will Shortz, is one such themed grid. Other theme styles include a famous quotation split across several entries and clued as Quote, part 1, part 2 and so on. British straight puzzles use the same abbreviation tricks, only far less often.
Source: Crossword
