Sharpen your pencils and your minds, all in one go, on this glorious Crossword Puzzle Day! These amazing word twisters allow you to expand your vocabulary and problem solving skills all in one go. There’s nothing like a crossword to start the day with your morning coffee, something to get the old gears going before you head into work for another grueling day.
History of Crossword Puzzle Day
First released in a ‘New York World’ newspaper edition on December 21, 1913, the crossword puzzle soon became the pastime of the more astute folk. The modern version of these ancestral puzzles is the invention of Arthur Wynne, a British-born violinist and journalist who emigrated to Pennsylvania when he was 19.
A century down the line, everybody who is moderately confident in their grey cells’ output is scribbling carbon-made capital letters on a piece of crumpled newspaper every morning. Given the many benefits of stimulating the brain with games and mental challenges, one could be as bold as to say that ‘A crossword puzzle a day keeps Alzheimer’s away’ (all other factors, mainly biological, excluded).
What is certain is that keeping the mind active and learning new things is a way to stave off many of the causes of senility, and that greater vocabularies are associated with better communication and a better ability to
How to celebrate Crossword Puzzle Day
To celebrate Crossword Puzzle Day, do like the cruciverbalists that dish out these mind-boggling challenges and create a crossword puzzle of your own on-line, or enter your national crossword tournament of choice. With varieties including acrostic, arroword, Finish, cipher and diagramless crosswords, there’s no end to the neuron-bending, pencil-blunting fun you can have!
If you’ve never done a crossword puzzle, Crossword Puzzle Day is your opportunity to start sharpening your brain and love of the written word. You can even sign up to participate in the competitions that go on around the world, where cruciverbalist’s around the world compete against each other to complete their crosswords in record time. These amazing linguists train like Olympic athletes, digging into dictionary after dictionary for the rarest and most obscure words, and doing multiple crosswords a day to ensure they’re at their absolute fighting peak.
Crossword competitions are no joke either, the prizes and competition get very fierce, with competitions occasionally awarding prizes in the thousands of dollars. So on this Crossword Puzzle Day, get out there and indulge in a new hobby, and expand your vocabulary.
