They’re Old Fashioned. They Were Never Supposed to Be This Popular. I Saw Why They’re Only Getting Bigger.

Downtime

How the Crossword Conquered America

Even in a boom time for games, the decidedly old-fashioned puzzles are more popular than ever. I went to the best place on Earth to understand why.

June 22, 20265:40 AM

What are puzzles for? They boom at times of trouble. During the 1930s, the New York Times dithered about whether to make its crossword puzzle a regular, serious feature of the paper. Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor. Margaret Farrar became the paper’s first crossword puzzle editor after writing to the Times’ publisher in the aftermath of the attack. “I don’t think I have to sell you on the increased demand for this type of pastime in an increasingly worried world,” she wrote. “You can’t think of your troubles while solving a crossword.”