![]() Crosswords were scorned as the “the laziest occupation” and an “ unsociable habit.” One British woman took her husband to court for staying in bed until 11 a.m. Judging by reports at the time, this proverbial “wild hyacinth” had invaded the UK by the following year, when reports appeared of Queen Mary, wife of King George V, taking up the pastime. In the London Times’ estimate, over ten million people spent half an hour each day working out the puzzles when they should be working, noting “this loss to productive activity of far more time than is lost by labor strikes.” It even compared them to an invasive weed, stating “The cross-word puzzle threatens to be the wild hyacinth of American industry.” This “fad” was “in trains and trams on omnibuses, in subways, in private offices and counting rooms, in factories and homes, and even - though as yet rarely - with hymnals for camouflage, in church.” Along with other modern trends, the crossword had supposedly “dealt the final blow to the art of conversations.” Crossword puzzles: An invasive weed The omnipresence of crosswords in the U.S. In a few short weeks it has grown from the pastime of a few ingenious idlers into a national institution and almost a national menace: a menace because it is making devastating inroads on the working hours of every rank of society. ![]() crossword craze with similar disdain, using an ironically tabloidesque headline “An enslaved America.” From 1924:Īll America has succumbed to the allurements of the cross-word puzzle. The New York Times would refuse to publish crosswords for another two decades.Īcross the Atlantic in the United Kingdom, the Times of London reported on the U.S. ![]() Tabloids were looked upon as trashy, childish, and plebeian and were labeled the “yellow press” after one of the numerous comic strips contained within them. As far as the journalistic establishment was concerned, crosswords were another mindless fad used as a substitute for good editorial, to keep readers coming back - much like BuzzFeed quizzes were in the 2010s. This animosity makes more sense when you understand the origins of crossword puzzles in America: They were popularized via the pages of the original tabloid, The New York World, the “new media” of the day. This piece prompted a letter to the editor by a reader who retorted, “I am afraid that a good many of your readers will disagree with the views expressed,” pointing out that it was generally agreed that crosswords were educational. “The indictment of the puzzles goes further and deeper,” it said, citing The New Republic, which posited that there wasn’t a worse exercise for writers and speakers due to it fixing “false definitions in the mind.” In another piece published the following year, titled “ See harm not education,” the Times argued that learning obscure three-letter words was useless - but it didn’t stop there. Claims that these puzzles were good mental exercise and a way to expand one’s personal lexicon, via a dictionary, were dismissed. When crossword puzzles first swept across North America in the mid-1920s, The New York Times sneered, calling them “a familiar form of madness” and the next fad after Mahjong. ![]()
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