PUZZLE BOUND.

Shannon News, 24 February 1925, Page 3

PUZZLE BOUND.

AN EPIDEMIC. CROSS WORDS CRAZE. NEW YORK, December 11. Sweeping everything before it, a virulent epidemic is attacking the United States from coast to coast. It not only has baffled all the doctors, it has numbered them among its most hopeless victims. Lest the reader should start to search for his medical dictionary, let me hasten to give the name of the strangest epidemic that has ever attacked the American people. It is known as the "Cross-Word Puzzle mania." Nobody seems to know uow the new craze emerged from obscurity of the Sunday page in a. newspaper into the role of a daily necessity. The cross-word puzzle affords a form of mental exercise which is at first intriguing,, then diverting, and eventually, as the businese of puzzlesolving becomes a habit, it is compelling. Friends of the puzzle contend that the mental exprcise involved in finding the missing words will stimulate rapid Jhinking. and lead to a quickening of the average brain. A few days ago a Brooklyn woman sued for divorce on the grounds of her husband's neglect. An enterprising clergyman in Pittsburgh has introduced the puzzle as a means of popularising the church service. He has a large blackboard in front of the pulpit, and on it a diagram of a puzzio, which,, when solved, gives the text of his sermon. He refuses to preach until the congregation has solved it.

A broadcasting station, keeping apace with the times, now includes a cross-word puzzle in its nightly programme. LONDON, December 11. Imported from America, where its fatal charm has enslaved everyone who considers himself entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the Cross-Word Puzzle is increasing its devotees England at the rate of thousands daily. Most of the London and many of the provincial newspapers are conducting cross-word puzzle competitions, and the new cult has already reached the dimensions of a craze.