How The New York Times’s Crossword Puzzle Got Its Start — in a Time of War

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On Dec. 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor (and 76 years ago today), the Sunday editor for The Times sent a memo to the publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

It said: “We ought to proceed with the puzzle, especially in view of the fact it is possible there will now be bleak blackout hours — or if not that, then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind or other.”

That’s how a time of national grief helped lead to one of The Times’s most beloved features. The crossword puzzle debuted two months later as a weekly feature in the Sunday magazine.

The crossword editor at the time, Margaret Farrar, followed a simple rule: good manners. She refused to allow unpleasant or impolite language — a rule that’s still followed by The Times’s current crossword editor, Will Shortz.

Nowadays, we like to think of our crossword puzzle as the form’s gold standard.

But The Times didn’t always hold crosswords in high regard. In 1924, a Times opinion column called the completion of crosswords a “sinful waste.”

Crossword solvers, the column claimed, “get nothing out of it except a primitive sort of mental exercise.”

Many of us would disagree. (We even have some tips on how to get started.)