Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers. The crossword puzzle's role in World War II and the fight against Nazism.
Mar 26, 2026
Natan Last, author and crossword historian best known for Across the Universe, explores the early rise of crosswords and their crafted aesthetics. He recounts the 1920s cultural backlash, library bans, and how New York Times puzzles during World War II were used to boost morale and push back against Nazism. He also links the puzzle craze to modern communal rituals like Wordle.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Crossword Name Came From A Typesetter's Flip
- Crosswords began as 'word cross' in 1913 and the name flipped when typesetters rotated the hyphen, creating 'crossword'.
- Arthur Wynne invented the puzzle for the New York World and early grids were hand-inked and decorated.
1920s Backlash Framed Crosswords As Frivolous
- Early critics saw crosswords as frivolous, fake intellectualism, and a youth fad that distracted from serious reading.
- The 1925 Times op-ed called them a 'Familiar Form of Badness' amid postwar leisure culture and flapper-era anxiety.
Libraries Banned Puzzles To Protect Serious Use
- Libraries banned or resisted crosswords because patrons used reference materials to solve puzzles instead of reading serious works.
- Institutions argued they must defend themselves from 'unserious' patrons swarming dictionaries and newspapers.
