Doing one crossword everyday is great, but of course, the more you do the better! Start integrating them into other parts of your life. Whenever you're waiting for an espresso—whether for five minutes or for half an hour—that's a great time for a crossword puzzle. Do crossword puzzles make you smarter?

On Dec. 21, 1913, in a Sunday edition of The New York World, the first-ever “word-cross” puzzle appeared. The first-ever cruciverbalist, or person skilled in the creation or solving of crossword puzzles, was a journalist named Arthur Wynne from Liverpool, who’d immigrated to the states. A few weeks after the first word puzzle of its kind appeared, a typesetting error changed the name “word-cross” to “cross-word,” and it’s been called a crossword puzzle since.You may think of crosswords as mere mind games, but these activities can actually boost brain tissue health and improve your cognitive skills. According to researchers, playing crosswords, particularly at an advanced level, can significantly increase the size of your hippocampus — the area of our brain that is responsible for memory and learning. Why should you play crossword puzzles?

Playing our free online crossword puzzles is very easy. Start by choosing your favorite puzzle (or puzzles, for some crossword-heads). Then, choose which crossword you would like to play. These are clues that are less obvious and use wordplay. This means that one of the words may have multiple meanings, for example, “crane” can mean: If you’re a teacher or a parent trying to learn how to create a crossword puzzle as an educational tool, it’s quite easy!

Controlling the Room

If you want, you can go to the menu and customize your preferences. For example, you can choose to skip boxes that are already full when typing in new answers. Despite the fact that female editors have been important to crossword construction for many years, there has been a distinct drop in female crossword editors and constructors in the Shortz era. To combat this, two different projects — Women of Letters and The Inkubator — seek to highlight female crossword creators. The World’s Sunday crossword begins to spread to other newspapers. The Pittsburgh Press publishes their first crosswords this year.

Famed lyricist Stephen Sondheim (of Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and A Little Night Music) introduces Americans to the British-style cryptic crossword in New York magazine. If you do the same crossword over and over again, you'll never see any improvement. But if you find a variety of different crosswords and work them into your routine, then you'll always have something new to look forward to and something new to challenge yourself with. Many editors like homophones, which are words that sound like other words but are spelled differently. “Their,” “they’re,” and “there” are homophones. Roger Squires of the UK is officially recognized by Guinness World Records for being the most prolific crossword compiler as he publishes his 66,666th crossword.This is something you can do with our free online crossword puzzles because they give you a monthly points score. So, if you want to improve your skills then start one now and decide how many points you want to achieve this month! Are Crosswords Good For The Brain? The first crossword puzzle appeared in December 21st, 1913 of the Sunday edition of the New York World, written by Arthur Wynne. Since, crossword puzzles have grown in popularity and have become a standard part of newspapers and publications across the world. How do you get better at crossword puzzles? The format is simple: a grid is laid out with numbered clues and blank spaces. Each clue leads to a solution word, which fits in its respective space on the grid. The world’s first known crossword puzzle was created by British-born journalist Arthur Wynne and published in the New York World newspaper in 1913. His puzzle featured in the “Fun” section of the paper.