WORD-CROSS BIRTHDAY

Dec. 21 was an auspicious day for the puzzling world: It's the crossword's centennial. Or is it?

What is commonly recognized as the first crossword puzzle was the creation of Arthur Wynne for the "Fun" page of the New York World newspaper. The grid was a hollow diamond shape, not quite like the conventional American crossword that we know and love with its symmetrical black squares. The standard rules for grid construction would be worked out by Mr. Wynne's assistant, Margaret Petherbridge, who would go on to fame as a crossword editor under her married name, Margaret Farrar. (click below to read more)

What is more, the puzzle printed on Dec. 21, 1913, wasn't even called a "crossword." At the top, it reads "Fun's Word-Cross Puzzle." Skip ahead to the Jan. 4, 1914, puzzle, and it still says "Word-Cross," but the instructions read, "Find the Missing Cross Words." Then on Jan. 11, the evolution was complete: The title was changed to read "Fun's Cross-Word Puzzle."

According to crosswording lore, the substitution of "cross-word" for "word-cross" was a printing error. Because the solver was instructed to fill in the "cross words," the typesetter accidentally inverted the words in the title, and the new name stuck.

The story sounds apocryphal. Dean Olsher, in his crossword history "From Square One," repeats the story but observes that the change of name could simply have been due to "the natural fluidity that occurs when a creative concept is in its infancy, when stakes are low."

Mr. Wynne died in relative obscurity in 1945, but we are fortunate that a familial connection still survives. Merl Reagle, a legendary crossword constructor whose puzzles appear in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and many other newspapers, had been hunting for information about Mr. Wynne and his family for many years. Finally, in July, he discovered that a daughter of Mr. Wynne, Catherine Wynne Cutler, was still alive, having just turned 80. And he found that she lived in Clearwater, Fla., not far from his own home in Tampa Bay.

Mr. Reagle and his wife, Marie Haley, who assists him in the puzzle business, met with Ms. Cutler, forging a link to the past. I called her to ask about the oft-repeated tale of the typesetter changing "word-cross" to "cross-word," and she confirmed that her father said it was a mistake.

"He laughed about it," Ms. Cutler told me. "He said that the typesetter had come to him and said he had done this, and he was sorry. And Daddy laughed and said he liked it better, actually."

After another couple of decades, "cross-word" would lose its hyphen, and now "crossword" is the byword for puzzle enthusiasts around the globe.