Leonard Dawe, a mild-manned, bespectacled headmaster at a boys’ prep school, was one of the Observer’s top constructors, contributing hundreds of puzzles to that newspaper. Most suspiciously of all, British intelligence officials traced the suspect puzzles to a single source.
#Ny times crossword editor 1942 1969 code#
But in May 1994, more unusual code words started appearing, and more frequently: UTAH and OMAHA, two more beaches MULBERRY, the operation’s floating harbors NEPTUNE, the naval-assault stage and OVERLORD, the name for D‑Day itself. The appearance of GOLD, SWORD and JUNO, code names for beaches assigned to Allied troops, didn’t cause too much suspicion at first after all, these were relatively common words, spaced far enough apart that they could be chalked up to coincidence. During World War II, some answers in the Observer’s puzzles put British intelligence offices on alert. In England, the crossword contained more serious threats to civilization than potential lack of civility. But she also made sure that puzzles passed the Sunday Breakfast Test that is, clues and answers would be appropriate for all ages. Most of these were architectural – grids cannot contain unchecked squares, for example, and grids must have rotational symmetry. While other publications might allow for wild-looking grids and play fast and loose in terms of clues, Farrar instituted regulations that have now become industry standards. Farrar, who started her career as crossword editor at the New York World, insisted on the highest-quality puzzles possible.
#Ny times crossword editor 1942 1969 series#
Sulzberger hired Margaret Petherbridge Farrar, who edited Simon and Schuster’s wildly successful series of crossword collections, as its puzzle editor.
Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter But, he reasoned, if the Times was going to have a crossword, it was going to be the best crossword in the nation. So Sulzberger decided to institute a puzzle. And, as an editor pointed out in a note to publisher Arthur Hay Sulzberger, the crossword would provide readers something to occupy time during coming blackout days. Suddenly, the puzzle was not a frivolous distraction but a necessary diversion, something to keep readers sane with the rest of the news so bleak. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, the Times caved. 15, 1942, just two months after the Japanese Navy Air Service had launched its air strike against the U.S. Its editors also believed that the paper should captivate readers’ attention without needing to rely on a puzzle.įor decades, the Times remained the only major metropolitan newspaper in America without a puzzle. This moral high ground stemmed from the Times’ historical abstinence from any kind of yellow journalism: the paper wanted to maintain the highest standards possible. Throughout the ’20s and ’30s, the Times ran several editorials pooh-poohing crosswords as a passing fad though solvers wrote pleading the paper to print a puzzle, the publishers refused.
Readers clearly craved puzzles, but one American newspaper refused to yield its staunch stance against games: the New York Times.
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