"It was the start of World War II, and it was thought that people needed to take their minds off the grim war news. "The probably apocryphal story is that Sulzberger was tired of buying the competing New York Herald Tribune to get their crossword," says current New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz.
The holdout of The Times might have had something to do with the fact that it had never done comics or entertainment features of any sort - the fun stuff was considered frivolous by its editors. Simon and Schuster published the first crossword puzzle book that year, and most American newspapers started a crossword between 19. When the crossword puzzle craze gripped the United States in 1924, the paper publicly condemned the fad, publishing a scornful editorial in which it called crosswords the "latest of the problems presented for solution by psychologists interested in the mental peculiarities of mobs and crowds." Which was a pretty sick burn back in 1924. Strangely enough, The New York Times was the last major metropolitan daily newspaper in the country to start a crossword. Pushing 80 years old, The New York Times daily crossword in particular is an American institution. It's relaxing, fun to do alone or with a buddy, and research shows it's good for your brain. If you don't enjoy solving crosswords, your friends or coworkers, parents or grandparents might. These days, lots of people solve the puzzles online or electronically.
It used to be a major challenge to try and solve the Sunday puzzle in pen.
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