Arthur Wynne (; June 22, 1871January 14, 1945) was the Liverpool-born inventor of the modern crossword puzzle.

Early life

Arthur Wynne was born on June 22, 1871, in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, and lived on Edge Lane for a time. His father was the editor of the local newspaper, the '' Liverpool Mercury''. He emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

on June 6, 1891, at the age of 19,Declaration of Intention o become a naturalized US citizendated March 21, 1917, New Jersey State Archives settling for a time in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

."Arthur Wynne, o Desconhecido Ilustre"

Career

While in Pittsburgh, Wynne worked on the '' Pittsburgh Press'' newspaper and played the violin in the

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) is an American orchestra based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The orchestra is resident at Heinz Hall, located in Pittsburgh's Cultural District. Since 2008, the orchestra's music director is Manfred Ho ...

.U.P. obituary dated January 15, 1945. He later moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and worked on the '' New York World'' newspaper. He is best known for the invention of the crossword puzzle in 1913, when he was a resident of Cedar Grove, New Jersey.Jaegar, Philip Edward (2000). ''Cedar Grove''. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Wynne created the page of puzzles for the "Fun" section of the Sunday edition of the ''New York World''. For the December 21, 1913, edition, he introduced a puzzle with a diamond shape and a hollow center, with the letters F-U-N already being filled in. He called it a "Word-Cross Puzzle."Augarde, Tony (2003). ''The Oxford Guide to Word Games''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . Although Wynne's invention was based on earlier puzzle forms, such as the word diamond, he introduced a number of innovations (e.g. the use of horizontal and vertical lines to create boxes for solvers to enter letters). He subsequently pioneered the use of black squares in a symmetrical arrangement to separate words in rows and columns. With the exception of the numbering scheme, the form of Wynne's "Word-Cross" puzzles is that used for modern crosswords. A few weeks after the first "Word-Cross" appeared, the name of the puzzle was changed to "Cross-Word" as a result of a typesetting error. Wynne's puzzles have been known as "crosswords" ever since.

Later life and death

Arthur Wynne became a naturalized US citizen in the 1920s.U.S. Census 1920, 1930 He died in

Clearwater, Florida Clearwater is a city and the county seat of Pinellas County, Florida, United States, west of Tampa, Florida, Tampa and north of St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg. To the west of Clearwater lies the Gulf of Mexico and to the southeast lies T ...

, on January 14, 1945.

Legacy

On December 20, 2013, he was honored with an interactive Google Doodle commemorating th
"100th anniversary of the first crossword puzzle"
ref> with a puzzle by Merl Reagle. Numerous other constructors also create
tribute puzzles to Wynne
to commemorate the anniversary.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wynne, Arthur 1871 births 1945 deaths Crossword creators English emigrants to the United States Naturalized citizens of the United States People from Cedar Grove, New Jersey Writers from Liverpool