Crossword puzzles are often found in newspapers
A crossword puzzle is a game or pastime that consists of filling in the gaps in a drawing with letters. To discover which letter should be written in each space, the crossword puzzle indicates the meaning of the words that should be read vertically and horizontally. The idea, therefore, is that the completed crossword puzzle template presents a series of words that can be read vertically and horizontally and that intersect with each other.
How to complete a crossword puzzle
To begin completing a crossword puzzle, the person must read the two lists of definitions that the puzzle presents: one corresponding to the vertical sense and another for the horizontal sense. The template or drawing is divided into white boxes (where the individual letters must be written) and black boxes (which are used to separate the words).
Thus, when reading a definition and knowing the word, the participant has to enter the crossword puzzle, writing a letter in each white box of the corresponding space. In this way, little by little the game will be completed.
Types of crossword puzzles
There are various variants of crossword puzzles, such as the syllabic crossword puzzle (which must be completed with one syllable per box, and not one letter), the character crossword puzzle (which includes a photograph of a personality to complete their first and last name) or the crossword puzzle. white (no black boxes, since the participant must discover where the spaces are located).
Crossword puzzles are usually published in newspapers and magazines, although there are also publications and books that are dedicated exclusively to this game that first appeared in the New York World in December 1913 .
History of crossword puzzles
The origin of crossword puzzles dates back to the 1st century . The first crossword puzzle was found in the ruins of Pompeii and is known as the sator square .
Sator's Square, the first crossword puzzle
Later, well into the 19th century, a man known as Hyperion published the famous double diamond puzzles ; They were mental games that were very similar to current crossword puzzles (with little squares where the user had to interweave the words until they found the correct combination). It is believed that these publications were made over several years.
Years later, a game would emerge that was deeply inspired by the sator square and that consisted of a four-by-four grid with some clues so that users could find the answers; However, this entertainment was not very successful.
Finally, Arthur Wynne, an English journalist, published the first crossword puzzle as we know it today in the New York World. It was called "word-cross" although a few years later the term by which we still know this entertainment was coined.
Crossword Elements
The fundamental elements of a crossword puzzle are: the grid (white cells with small numbers that are associated with the references) and the references (they are usually located at the bottom of the page and consist of a series of very concise definitions that allow the user to link a word with the space available to complete the grid).
It is important to mention that the references are divided into two parts, those corresponding to the grid read horizontally , and those corresponding to the vertical distribution.
The words are chosen in such a way that those boxes shared by two words have a letter that is the same for the position of both terms, the horizontal and the vertical, in this way, as the grid is filled it is easier to find the missing words.
a therapy
These hobbies are usually recommended for those people who find it easy to forget things since it keeps their mind awake and helps them associate concepts. They are usually published singly in magazines called crossword puzzles or crossword puzzles and also in newspapers and magazines; In some cases, these crossword puzzles are themed .