News Release

Puzzles May Just be Our Answer to Hard Times

Joplin, MO  (03/13/2009)  Note: Carol Stark is editor of The Joplin Globe in Joplin, MO. She has given Universal Press Syndicate permission to republish her recent article on how puzzles might serve as a morale booster for people in hard times. As for the Joplin community, she writes: "Our folks down here love their puzzles." (including Sudoku and Wonderword)

Carol Stark: Need a boost? Work a puzzle

March 07, 2009 09:21 am

— In World War II, even with newspapers cutting their content to four pages, the crossword puzzles still held their place as required copy.

They were considered a morale booster for people in hard times.

I’m not so sure that a puzzle can even begin to fix the problems that plague us today, but I’ll admit it took me quite a while last Sunday to complete the Globe’s crossword puzzle. And, during that time, I wasn’t thinking about my 401k or wondering if my house was worth anything. No, I was thinking of little else but No. 8 down — a four-letter word for Macbeth’s dagger. I thought of some four-letter words, but none that were polite to use in a crossword puzzle.

I’m talking about puzzles today because, at the request of many of our readers, we’ve added a new daily Sudoku puzzle. You can find it back in the classified section of the paper. And, don’t forget the daily Wonderword and the weekend Scram-lets. That’s almost enough puzzles to allow you escape a pound of “pork” every day.

The first known published crossword puzzle was created by a journalist. That figures. I wonder if he was trying to avoid an assignment.

Arthur Wynne, from Liverpool, is usually credited as the inventor of the popular word game. It appeared on Dec. 21, 1913, in a Sunday newspaper, The New York World.

Wynne’s puzzle wasn’t like today’s crosswords. It was diamond-shaped and contained no internal black squares.

According to a number of Web sites I visited, the crossword shot up in popularity during the early 1920s like a six-letter word for an aerial propellant. A decade later, almost all American papers featured a crossword and they began to assume their familiar figure.

Oddly enough, the New York Times, now thought of as the authority on crosswords, was among the last of the newspapers to add the crossword.

It wasn’t until 1942 that The New York Times began running a crossword in its Sunday edition. In 1950, the crossword became a daily feature. It is such a big deal that the paper has crossword-puzzle editors.

I have a friend who subscribes to the Sunday New York Times primarily so she can work the puzzle. She’s good. She worked last week’s Globe puzzle in 20 minutes. She also told me I’ve been mispronouncing Sudoku wrong. But, she made me feel better when she told me it was a common mistake.

While the Sudoku is likely older than the crossword, it took much longer for it to catch on with the American public.

The 18th century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler developed the concept where numbers in a grid appear only once, across and up and down. But it wasn’t until 2005, according to sudokudaily.net that major newspapers in the United States were also offering Sudoku puzzles like they would daily crossword puzzles.

The ones we run have different levels and start out easy on Monday and work their way up. I kind of freeze up a little when I do one. It reminds me of a Rubik’s cube or even worse, a math problem.

So, sharpen a pencil and give it a try. And, be assured that no bailout money was used to bring these puzzles to your doorstep.

Carol Stark is editor of The Joplin Globe. Address correspondence to her, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, Mo. 64802 or e-mail cstark@joplinglobe.com.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.

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Contact(s): Kathie Kerr

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