A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues, which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, and South Africa. Compilers of cryptic crosswords are commonly called "setters" in the UK and "constructors" in the US.
A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology.
Kakuro or Kakkuro or Kakoro is a kind of logic puzzle that is often referred to as a mathematical transliteration of the crossword. Kakuro puzzles are regular features in many math-and-logic puzzle publications across the world. In 1966, Canadian Jacob E. Funk, an employee of Dell Magazines, came up with the original English name Cross Sums and other names such as Cross Addition have also been used, but the Japanese name Kakuro, abbreviation of Japanese kasan kurosu, seems to have gained general acceptance and the puzzles appear to be titled this way now in most publications. The popularity of Kakuro in Japan is immense, second only to Sudoku among Nikoli's famed logic-puzzle offerings.
Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.
Nikoli Co., Ltd. is a Japanese publisher that specializes in games and, especially, logic puzzles. Nikoli is also the nickname of a quarterly magazine issued by the company in Tokyo. Nikoli was established in 1980 and became prominent worldwide with the popularity of Sudoku.
The World Puzzle Championship is an annual international puzzle competition run by the World Puzzle Federation. All the puzzles in the competition are pure-logic problems based on simple principles, designed to be playable regardless of language or culture.
La Settimana Enigmistica is a weekly Italian word puzzle and word search magazine, published since 1932 with Europe-wide distribution. It's one of Italy's most popular and top-selling magazines. One of the footers on the front page of the magazine states è il settimanale che vanta innumerevoli tentativi di imitazione. Indeed, numerous other publications have followed in the wake of its popularity.
Timothy Eric Parker is an American puzzle editor, games creator, author, and TV producer.
The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.
Wei-Hwa Huang is an American puzzler, member of the US Team for the World Puzzle Championship, and game designer.
Margaret Petherbridge Farrar was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times (1942–1968). Creator of many of the rules of modern crossword design, she compiled and edited a long-running series of crossword puzzle books including the first-ever book of any kind published by Simon & Schuster.
Merl Harry Reagle was an American crossword constructor. For 30 years, he constructed a puzzle every Sunday for the San Francisco Chronicle, which he syndicated to more than 50 Sunday newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Times, The Plain Dealer, the Hartford Courant, the New York Observer, and the Arizona Daily Star. Reagle also produced a bimonthly crossword puzzle for AARP The Magazine magazine, a monthly crossword puzzle for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, and puzzles for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Puzzle Series is a series of puzzle video games by Hudson Soft.
Parnell Hall was a mystery writer. His works include the Puzzle Lady and the Stanley Hastings series, as well as the screenplay to the 1984 cult classic C.H.U.D. He collaborated with Manny Nosowsky for crossword puzzles and with Will Shortz for sudoku puzzles incorporated in Puzzle Lady stories.
Pazurgo is a word puzzle which normally takes the form of a rectangular grid with white and shaded squares. Pazurgo includes elements from Crossword puzzles and Word Search puzzles, along with the addition of its own unique elements.
Penny Publications, LLC is a United States magazine publisher specializing in puzzles, mysteries, and crosswords. As of 2011, Penny Publications publishes at least 85 magazines, distributed through newsstands, in stores, and by subscription in U.S. and Canada, and at least 60 puzzle books. Penny Publications' headquarters are in Norwalk, Connecticut.
David Steinberg is a crossword constructor and editor. At 15, he became the youngest published constructor in the Los Angeles Times and the youngest known crossword editor ever for a major newspaper.
Frank Longo is an American puzzle creator, and author of over 90 books, which have sold over 2 million copies.
Cracking the Cryptic (CTC) is a YouTube channel dedicated to paper-and-pencil puzzles: primarily sudoku, but also cryptic crosswords and other types of number-placement, pencil, and word puzzles. They occasionally stream puzzle games on YouTube.
