Arthur Wynne was a writer for the game page of the New York World at the turn of the 19th century. One winter afternoon in 1913, while trying to think up new types of games for the newspaper’s special Christmas edition, he came up with a way to adapt the "word squares" his grandfather had taught him when he was a boy.

But in the new puzzle Wynne came up with, the "across" words were different from the "down" words.

Wynne’s puzzle, which he called a "Word-Cross," debuted on Sunday December 21 as planned. And it was well-received.

Four weeks after the puzzle first appeared, typesetters at the newspaper inadvertently transposed the words in the title to read "Cross-Word."

the name stuck

M. Lincoln Schuster (R) and Ricahrd L. Simon (L)

made a deal with the paper’s crossword puzzle editors

They would pick the newspaper’s best crossword puzzles and

publish them in a book. The pair then used all their money to print The Cross Word Puzzle Book.

literally an overnight success