THE CONQUERING CROSSWORD.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, 8 May 1925, Page 4

THE CONQUERING CROSSWORD.

ITS VOGUE’-EVERYWHERE One© a thing starts there is no knowing whej:e, lt., wilL,,end Out, of mysterious America, at winch trie world, looks and. or wriicu it sees .so, little that matters, there, came, sahib months ago, r- some ■ of tne lesser 1 known Weekly lriagazines there have been ior years. .What it was, that determined the sudden..’.burst .of interest recently no one .’will ever know. Rut the tact remains that today in New York puhhc iibrarios the dictionaries are practically chained to • their places, like the Bibles in mediaev,al England. Every May long queues wait their turn, ahd for a time tho crowding and jostling became so great that many librarieslpassed by-laws, by which any member of ;a' queue who addressed any other member on the subject of their .V respective places, automatically forfeited, his right of entry for that day;. Nor has it ended here. Tlje schools! have taken up the craze and applied it to educational purposes, and- a,' wellknown professor-of logic has announced his intention of using the cross-word as a class exercise, being convinced of its value as a logical training. When cross-words traversed' the Atlantic to Britain, they immediately ■followed the same general course. The newspapers which have not yet succumbed to their vogue could he counted upon one’s hand—almost upon pile’s thumbs. Making their way into the schools, they have appeared in Latin, Greek, and French. Some of the weekly newspapers have also printed crosswords in foreign languages. One interesting departure, peculiar (for tho present) to England, is the literary or “highbrow” cross-word as such. The clues, instead of approximating to dictionary- - definitions, are given in terms of'; 'soine recondite literary allusion. Thus tho'Word 1 “necromancy”—the art of interpreting dreams—was clued iri one-, puzzle as follows. A food controller won his liberty because of his proficiency in mo. • 1 -

The unfortunate solver had to connect “Food Controller” with Pharaoh’s Joseph, to remember why the latter won his..freedom, and to find a word in eleven letters that expressed the nature of his accomplishment. Unexpectedly enough, the paper which printed this puzzle announced that it had received a host of attempted solutions from all parts of tho world. In London, enterprising booksellers put upon stock dictionaries, a new and topical paper cover, labelled “cross-word 1 dictionary,” and their astute window dressing is rewarded with huge sales. The British Museum has had to announce that solvers in search of - dictionaries will no longer bo admitted to its reading room. Under tho pressure of tho craze, that scholastic Holy of Holies was becoming for the first time in its history unpleasantly crowded.