What is a crossword puzzle and where did it come from

Many adults and children are very fond of solving crossword puzzles, but few know what a crossword really is and where it came from. This article will tell you about this.

What is a crossword puzzle?

What is a crossword puzzle? Crossword is usually called a game with words. This game is the most common and intellectual. If you literally translate the word "crossword" from English, you get two independent words: a cross and words. Thus, translating into Russian, we get a cross of words or a crossword. Hence, we can conclude that the crossword has its own distinctive property - it consists of the intersection of words. And the main thing is its rule - each letter should be written separately from the others, in its cage.

Summing up, we found out that the crossword hastheir distinctive properties and their own rules of compilation. But in many newspapers and magazines a crossword puzzle is a completely different task, not related to the intersection of words, or even not related to guessing words. And this means that such "crossword puzzles" are invented by illiterate compilers, and such publications themselves can not be considered qualitative.

So, we figured out what a crossword puzzle is in its classic version, then we'll look at what crosswords are like.

Types of crossword puzzles

Sometimes it's hard to understand which crossword puzzle, drawingonly in its name. The classification of crossword puzzles by their geographical name is more understandable: for example, a crossword can be American, English, Russian, Scandinavian or Japanese. Such crossword puzzles have their own rules, which are almost identical in all editions, and they are always solved by the same principle.

But it happens that the name is hard to understandabout what this crossword is. For example, the tea-bowl has nothing to do with either tea or Chinese tea-tea. This is a linear crossword puzzle, where words should not intersect, as in a classic crossword puzzle, but they are arranged in one line. The last letter of the last word is the beginning of the next.

Another kind of crossword is the cyclocourse. He also has a special structure: all the words here have the same number of letters and are located around the job.

So, what is a crossword, we figured out, now consider the history of the appearance of a crossword puzzle.

Where did the crossword puzzles come from?

The earliest mention of a crossword puzzle is a plate with a pattern very reminiscent of a crossword puzzle. It was found during the excavation of an ancient settlement in England and dates back to the 3rd and 4th centuries.

Modern crosswords have appeared relativelyrecently - about a century ago. But where exactly they appeared is a very controversial issue. To date, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa are contesting the right to be considered the birthplace of crossword puzzles. Each country has its own history of the appearance of the first crossword. For example, the inhabitants of England believe that the first crossword puzzles were issued by the London newspaper The Times in the middle of the 19th century. And in the United States, they believe that they have printed crossword puzzles since 1913 in the newspaper New York World.

South Africans tell a completely romanticthe history of the appearance of the first crossword: they were invented by a prisoner who painted his puzzles on the stone floor of the cell. Cellmates approved this novelty, later it was transferred to paper and sent by mail to the newspaper.

Crossword in the life of a child

What is a crossword puzzle in a child's life? This question is answered unequivocally by the teachers: it is an intellectual game that helps to develop memory, teaches the culture of thinking, teaches to look for missing information. While solving the crossword, the child fixes the acquired knowledge, and during this time he has an active memorization, which helps to assimilate the material effectively.

Choosing crossword puzzles for children, you need to considerage possibilities of the child, only then solving the crossword will do him good, facilitate further training, and will also become an exciting and useful activity.