In the bonus segment, we look at the early history of crossword puzzles and their surprising political uses. Natan Last explains how the “New York Times” crossword, which premiered during World War II, was used to boost morale and support the Allied war effort. We also look at the cultural frenzy of "crossworditis" in the 1920s and why libraries banned the puzzles as frivolous.
In the bonus segment, we look at the early history of crossword puzzles and their surprising political uses. Natan Last explains how the “New York Times” crossword, which premiered during World War II, was used to boost morale and support the Allied war effort. We also look at the cultural frenzy of "crossworditis" in the 1920s and why libraries banned the puzzles as frivolous.
Find Natan Last at Natanlast.com.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Greetings, Grammarpaloozians. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and I'm here with Natan Last, author of “Across the Universe,” this just wonderful book about crossword puzzles, the whole cross world, as they call it. And in the main section, we talked about using computers to construct crosswords. We have fun tidbits about Will Shortz and his crossword-patterned pajama bottoms. But in this, we're going to talk about the early history of crossword puzzles. Natan, welcome to the bonus section for the Grammarpaloozians.
Natan Last: Thanks. I'm excited for bonus content.
Mignon Fogarty: Yes. So the first thing that surprised me is that they originally were not called crossword puzzles. They were called word cross puzzles. What happened there?
Natan Last: That's right. Yeah. Arthur Wynne, the editor of the Fun Section of the New York World in 1913, had this idea for the word cross puzzle, and there was a hyphen, word hyphen cross. This was a big task for the typesetters. All the clues would be hand typeset. The grid would be hand-inked, and the title would be inked as well.
And the typesetters, who just were overwhelmed one day, spun it on the axis of that hyphen, and the crossword was born.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, I never thought of that, but like by hand, it would be tough to lay out a crossword puzzle in a paper.
Natan Last: Yeah, it's super, super tricky. For folks who really like comics, Ernie Bushmiller Jr., who drew Nancy, was one of the very first crossword inkers, right? He was in the art department of the New York World, and they weren't just black and white in the early teens and twenties. He would like do a woodcut finish, you know, he would do peppermint sort of stripes in the black squares. He would really kind of jazz it up back in the day before things were fully standardized.
Mignon Fogarty: Was he doing that by hand?
Natan Last: Yeah, you'd hand-ink them and then send them to the printer? Yeah.
Mignon Fogarty: Wow. Wow. So, another thing that cracked me up is that nobody thought they were going to be a big hit. Nobody thought they were going to last.
Natan Last: That's right. Yeah. Arthur Win actually tried to patent the puzzle, and there's two businessmen of the New York world who just think, this is a flash from the pan; this is not going to last. And so, they declined to cough up the patent fee, which would have been like 75 bucks at the time, a couple thousand today. And so, because of their kind of incorrect forecast, the crossword, you know, remains open to all.
Mignon Fogarty: That's great. And there was also such negativity toward it. Like, I just—shocking. Like, what was people's problem with crossword puzzles?
Natan Last: Yeah, there's this. In 1925, there’s an op-ed in the Times called "A Familiar Form of Badness," and it's the sense that crosswords are fake intellectualism, right? You know, you have at the same time people saying if you want to learn words, go read Shakespeare. And that piece in the Times was worried about leisure fads that have taken hold of the young in America. It's the Jazz Age. America is, for the first time, experiencing leisure time, right? The way the industrialization that occurs in World War I just totally reconfigures everyone's day, and also the way that after World War I, for the first time, America has fought on the world stage and comes home and sort of psychologically transmits some of that interest in fighting to these frivolous competitions.
So there's yo-yoing contests; beauty pageants are invented at this time. People, you know, see who can sit atop a flagpole for longest, right? There’s like, who can dance the longest? And all of this competitiveness gets channeled into games. And the sort of old guard at this time just thinks, you know, last year it was Mahjong. This year it's crosswords. What will the youth kind of waste their time on? It's also a thing that, you know, the early innovators of the crossword were all women. And in an age of, you know, flappers and kind of a new societal sense of sexuality, you know, this idea that women are turning their intellectual attention to something that is about being smart, but also a frivolous game, really, I think, stirred up a lot of anger.
Mignon Fogarty: That's fascinating. Yeah, because I mean, today I think people say, you know, do crossword puzzles to keep your brain sharp, and it's viewed very much as an intellectual pursuit. I mean, I couldn't believe that libraries banned them.
Natan Last: Yeah, no, there's a quote where, you know, these institutions claim a right to defend themselves, right? And their serious patrons from unseriousness. So, you know, puzzle fans are swarming the dictionary, and they're using the dictionary and the newspapers in the library to solve puzzles instead of doing something serious, like reading the day's headlines. So libraries ended up being this like protective cast, very angry at the crossword craze.
Mignon Fogarty: I mean, today I think libraries would be so excited if people were coming in and looking things up in the dictionary and the encyclopedia, like, oh my gosh, someone's using them. That's wonderful.
Natan Last: Totally.
Mignon Fogarty: And you said that a lot of the criticism came from Britain, and is this war-related?
Natan Last: Yeah. It's definitely, you know, there's this good cultural historian who talks about crosswords being really popular in 1920s America because they're at the cultural crossroads of Victorianism and modernism. And so you have these old Victorian mores of steadfastness and knowledge that are kind of being used in the crossword.
We're asking for knowledge, but also it's this very frivolous, punny, cutesy. And so you just get this tut-tutting that comes from the UK that, you know, is just a little bit more culturally conservative at the time, in the aftermath of the war. And, you know, writes an article, there's an article in the London Times in 1924 that called, you know, that's titled "An Enslaved America." And they're tallying up the number of hours lost to, you know, productive work, to labor because people are solving puzzles instead of doing their jobs, supposedly. And, you know, they make some quip like puzzles are worse than unions or something like that.
Mignon Fogarty: Oh my gosh.
Natan Last: Yeah, people are really mad.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I mean, I can imagine today, like, I don't know, like the Hustle bros being like, "Don't waste your time on crossword." I mean, it has that same vibe, like you aren't working hard enough.
Natan Last: That's right. That's right. And I think there's a really interesting thing where, you know, there's all of this wonderful ephemera from the twenties of people at their jobs, kind of ignoring what they ought to be doing, at least as far as their employers are concerned, and instead solving a crossword.
And so it is this image—this is true. Throughout the entire century, puzzles have been popular that, you know, it has the vibe of a shier, right? And you're sort of proudly not doing what you're supposed to be doing, but you're doing it in a way that expresses that you're smart and that you're worldly. And so it's got those two interesting angles to it for sure.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, I mean, I do have that problem. I somewhat relate because, you know, I started doing puzzles, and then I realized I was doing more and more puzzles, and then I discovered this site that has puzzles, and that site that has puzzles and I looked up and I was spending like two hours a day doing word puzzles, and I'm like, "Okay, I need to dial it back like a little bit."
Natan Last: Definitely. No, it's really hard. I mean, I have a lot of friends who have to get through, you know, Wordle and Spelling Bee and so on before they start their day, and I'm actually not as disciplined as that. I sort of solve puzzles whenever the mood strikes, but people really make a routine of it.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, absolutely you can. And so, like, so World War I was sort of what boosted, you know, it was after World War I when people had all this free time and maybe were embracing frivolity that puzzles started, and then World War II, like in another war, seemed to boost them even more. Yeah, I think it is because crosswords have this feel of forward progress, but also are a frivolous game that they end up really becoming important in moments of crisis. And so the New York Times, in particular, does not acquiesce to the crossword craze, right? So puzzles are invented in 1913 at the New York World. There's that big craze in the twenties, and then it isn't until World War II that the Times says, "I think we're going to need something after Pearl Harbor to sort of quiet the home front," right? They're about to be blackout hours. It's going to be a pretty bleak national moment. A distraction could be useful.
And so the Times hires Margaret Farrar, who had been the brains and brawn behind the first crossword puzzle book in 1924, to be their inaugural editor. Switching from, you know, their line before had been, "Without The New York Times, without comics, without puzzles," strictly a newspaper. And I kind of love both senses of the word "strict" there, where they're like sort of knuckle-wrapping in their strictness as well. Yeah, no, I was really surprised that it was such a conscious reaction to World War II, and then even though it was supposed to be a diversion, like the puzzle it seems like it was actually quite political often during that time.
Natan Last: Yeah, no, there's a constructor named John Farmer who helped digitize a lot of the puzzles from that Margaret Farrar era. So the early days of the New York Times puzzle. And he has a quip that goes something like, "Margaret Farrar practically enlisted the New York Times crossword in the Allied War effort."
Right. Because, you know, there'll be clues like, "He thinks he can get along with Hitler" for the word "appeaser." Or the Atlantic Ocean will be clued as "junkyard for Nazi subs." And it's this real like, you know, like squaring up kind of vibe for a game that we think of as encyclopedic, as dispassionate, you know, as purely just feeding you straight-up facts when, in fact, you know, the New York Times in 1942—who could blame them? Can't do anything but talk about the war that was so all-encompassing.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, it's still on everyone's mind. And you mentioned the pandemic earlier, like you had during the lockdown phase of the pandemic; crossword puzzles and all word games got another huge boost.
Natan Last: Yeah. I really think Wordle is a huge anchor point here. The philosopher of games, C.T. Nen, who I quote a lot in the book, talks about words' narrative nature. So it's not just that you solve a game every day; it's that you send everyone in the group chat or on Twitter that, you know, five-by-six grid of green and yellow and gray. That is a picture of how you struggled, from beginning guessing to the end, hopefully victory. And that communal and that narrative aspect I think was really helpful for people who, in lockdown, felt really unmoored, both in the spatial sense—they're stuck at home—but also in time, right?
Temporally, there's not a lot going on. Each day looks like the next and the last. So something like the crossword streak, where you just have this sense of forward progress—I've done the puzzle a hundred days in a row. I've gotten faster at solving Mondays. Three months in a row, that sense of forward progress, of intellectual accomplishment, in a moment when not much is happening. And for those of us with stressful jobs, we feel like we're sort of being sacrificed at the altar of productivity. Being productive in a non-productive game, I think, was a balm for a lot of people.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, and it really brought people together. I was on a Slack, and, you know, even when I didn't have something to say every day, it was nice to just check in and post my puzzle and say, like, "I'm still here."
Natan Last: Totally. No, I mean, the way that, you know, Wordle group chats have brought, you know, aunts and nieces and nephews and people who are further flung in their family units than usually talk—it really has brought a lot of people together in a way that is just a good thing. I
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Was it during lockdown? There was a wonderful story in your book about two siblings who did crosswords together. I think it was crosswords when their mother was sick. Was that also during lockdown?
Natan Last: Yeah. So I tell the story of, you know, Ben and Hadas, who are siblings, and their mother is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They kind of rush home, and in the hospital, Ben actually hooks up his laptop to the big TV screen, and he and his sister solve the puzzle. and their mother is sort of watching them collaborate, and it's a really wonderful moment for her. She helps when she's sort of well enough, and they kind of make it a ritual to solve it every day. And she does unfortunately pass away from the cancer, and they end up quarantining because COVID happens at this time for something like a year and a half in their childhood home, right? Which is now in a somber reversal of the empty nest.
It's kind of, she's gone, but they're still there. And the crossword, because it began as a streak when they were with her in the hospital room, there was a sense that if they can just keep doing it every day, it kind of keeps her memory alive. And in fact, you know, the first day of lockdown in which they're able to kind of kick loose a little bit, they go to a friend who owns a bar. and there's like a bit of you know, goodbye because someone's moving; the bar's emptied of other patrons. You know, Hadas had a margarita in months or whatever. They have a good time. They come home, they go to bed, they wake up, and they realize that they hadn't solved the puzzle that day. So this kind of streak has been broken. The incantation has been, you know, muted and it's really sad. They sort of break down in tears in a funny way. They end up doing the puzzle and they email the Times, and the Times is sort of happy to reinstate the streak. Yeah, you can kind of, you know, call the manager a little bit on that one.
But it just ends up being this really beautiful way of like marking time, of remembering their mother, of becoming closer as siblings, and working through a dark moment. So the puzzle has all these sorts of, you know, salutary and intimate aspects that I think get a little underrated. Because it is this knowledge game, but it has these softer aspects too.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Very cool. Well, the book is called Across the Universe. Oh. In books, we have to do your book recommendations. So, you know, we want people to go get your book “Across the Universe,” and honestly, it would make just a wonderful gift for anyone who does crossword puzzles. But after you finish “Across the Universe,” what are some of the books that you recommend?
You know, what do you buy for gifts for people, or what are books that have stayed with you over the years?
Natan Last: Yeah, no, I love this question. I'm also, you know, I write crosswords, and I write prose and poetry as well. And so I like to give one recommendation of each type. So I love recommending poetry. One of my favorite books of poems of all time is “Lighthead” by Terrance Hayes, which is just really playful with language. It's really sonic. It's got a sort of hip-hop energy to it, but it's also very tender. And I think for people who don't read a lot of poetry, it can be a really fun and exciting entry point to poetry. For nonfiction, I recently reread “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” which is by Le Price, and it's really wonderful.
It's just like a really great book; she's a book historian, but it's just a wonderful history of the book as an object. So, taking us all the way back from indulgences, right? Single-page Catholic Church-produced texts to, you know, the very first audiobooks, which is to say, you know, twelve-year-olds working in a factory getting read to, right? And the way that we have this sense of distraction, which was also something levied at physical books because everyone was used to morality at the time. And so it's this really wonderful history that I think breaks us away from a lot of the sort of anger we have about distraction in reading.
It was sort of affirming to read that some of these debates are centuries old. And then for fiction, again, another recent reread, but for me in this, you know, AI era of bullet points and lifeless prose, I end up turning to novelists who are really pyrotechnic and wonderful at the sentence level. And so I recently reread "Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov, and it's just so fun word by word and so crackling with, you know, personality and I feel like with every single sentence, I learn a new word, and it really made me...It was a breath of fresh air given some of the stuff we have to read today.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, and like one little tidbit in your book that I didn't think we'd get to, but that was so fascinating, and now we can, is that Nabokov, he had synesthesia.
Natan Last: Yeah, he had grapheme-color synesthesia and like sees all these different letters as different colors, and of course, he describes it beautifully. You know, he talks about O's as, I think, being like, which I think that one is like, like rolled oats or something. And he talks about, you know, R's as vulcanized rubber. So he uses his own wonderful powers of description to bring us into what he sees, which is, yeah, a wonderful grapheme-color synesthesia.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, and just thinking about how that would affect the way you view words and how you write. And then he married a woman who had synesthesia, and their son has synesthesia. So that was like the whole family. But they saw things in different ways, though, right? If I remember right.
Natan Last: Yeah. Yeah. I think he sees sort of, I think it's M's as like blue, and she sees them as red, and I think, you know, their son Dimitri ends up seeing it as purple. So it's like a beautiful, you know, you get the palette of the two parents, and the colors are...
Mignon Fogarty: It was mind-blowing. And actually, I looked it up, I tried to see if there were other famous authors who had synesthesia after I read that in your book, and I couldn't find any. I really... there aren't. There aren't any that are as well-known, at least as he is. And yeah, I was bummed because I was hoping that there were a whole bunch of them, and I wanted to do a big roundup about it, but like there weren't.
Natan Last: Yeah, I'll let you know if I can think of any others. I mean, his really just shines through, as you're saying, in his prose for sure.
Mignon Fogarty: Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you, Natan Last, author of "Across the Universe," this fabulous book about crossword puzzles. Where can people find you?
Natan Last: You can, my website is natanlast.com, and Natan Last on all of the socials, so Instagram and X and so on. And yeah...
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here.
Natan Last: Thank you.