Crossword puzzles are more than a century old, and they’re just as popular with today’s solvers as they were during the height of printed newspapers. What is it about the crossword puzzle that fascinates people, and why should the world still care about crosswords while several wars are raging between the front page headlines and the daily puzzles? Here’s a closer look at crosswords, and clues as to why they still have mass appeal.

Why crosswords have appeal

Author Joan Didion was a famous crossword enthusiast, joined by others like Bill Clinton – crossword puzzles will have immediate appeal for anyone who enjoys solving riddles or looking for clues, and certainly attract anyone with a love for language or reading. Crosswords might lack fancy graphics and look a far cry from Far cry; however, crosswords appeal to the imagination rather than the eyes – thinking outside the box to fit inside the grid.

Solving a crossword is exciting, but “playing” is about the journey of getting there just as much as the end destination. Some crossword clues will keep the aspirant solver busy for days or weeks. Sometimes you think you’ve added the correct answer – until something else doesn’t fit. Crosswords spark creativity and are sometimes the type of puzzle that is partially played and then put away until later. Much like knitting or cards, an incomplete crossword puzzle will stay exactly where you last left it – unless there’s more than one crossword enthusiast in the household. Crosswords draws in amateur sleuths, bookworms, readers and anyone with a love for languages or wordplay.

Crosswords: Solitary and social

Contract bridge, poker and games like Go Fish are predominantly social ones, unless you’re playing against a computer. People get together for a designated game night, or someone happens to have a card deck and it leads to a spontaneous game of whatever everyone knows how to play.

The crossword puzzle is a different animal entirely, and could be played as either a solitary or a social game. It’s acceptable to solve a crossword entirely on your own, but it’s also common for people to extend unsolvable riddles to friends or family members in an attempt to move the puzzle forward.

A crossword puzzle is a fantastic mask for any introvert: simply ignore everything around you and pay attention to the puzzle. Simultaneously, crossword puzzles can also be fantastic for crawling out of your immediate environment – sometimes one might ask complete strangers for possible solutions. Like literature itself, crosswords can be a retreat into your own world or an extension into someone else’s.

Meet the maker

Matt Ginsberg is best known to crossword fans as the creator of Dr Fill, an artificially intelligent crossword solver that has been ranked as one of the world’s best. An AI crossword solver doesn’t just solve crosswords; it illustrates just what computers can do with unseen information. However, Ginsberg says that it’s the community surrounding crossword puzzles that fascinates him the most. “I’ve done many things over the course of my life. The single best thing about crosswords is actually the extraordinary community – intelligent, eclectic and welcoming.”

Crossword communities are everywhere and are increasingly connecting online to keep their love for crosswords alive. Newspapers have switched to online editions, but luckily crossword puzzles have joined them and gone electronic. There’s no shortage of online crossword puzzles and, thankfully, archives of them.

Crossword communities await their favourite puzzles, often daily, but also create many of their own. Searching for “crossword creator” makes it effortless for any fan (or teacher) to create a customised grid. Crossword puzzles are also a necessary distraction from hard-hitting headlines – something to look forward to, especially when you don’t know what the news headlines could have in store tomorrow.

The benefits

Playing contract bridge is beneficial to the brain and is recommended as one way to maintain and even improve cognitive function. However, most readers will scratch their heads when hearing of the Stayman convention – even though bridge is becoming more popular in United States schools.

Crosswords are accessible and adaptable. Regular crossword puzzles can improve memory and cognitive function, according to a formal study that made its subjects solve crosswords over an 18-month period. Puzzles can also be useful for vocabulary building, and especially practical when learning your way around a new language. The typical crossword format can be used to familiarise solvers with specific terms. For example, using crosswords as a learning tool meant that students showed better information recall for medical industry terms. Life isn’t just about fruits and vegetables; solving puzzles can help to maintain good health, too.

Crosswords and where to find them

If you’re looking for crosswords, they’re available in various formats – quick, standard, celebrity, cryptic or much weirder.

Newspapers remembered for their paper crosswords have switched to online puzzles, with the benefit of an archive:

• The Guardian (theguardian.com/crosswords)
• The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com/games/crossword)
• USA Today (puzzles.usatoday.com)

A search unearths more crossword puzzle sites, including Boatload Puzzles (boatloadpuzzles.com) and MiNDFOOD (mindfood.com). Slightly more niche, the site When We Crosswords (whenwecrosswords.com) has a library where you can find puzzles about anything from accounting terms to constitutional law. For anyone wondering already: yes, there are adult-oriented, obscene crosswords out there, too – starting with Crasswords: Dirty crosswords for cunning linguists.

Regular, cryptic or celebrity?

My youthful reading experiences were filled with RL Stine and Stephen King, but I also had the joy of discovering an abundance of old magazines from charity shops – and within these, I found perhaps hundreds of different crossword puzzles. There’s a saying that attests: knowledge is using a pen to solve a crossword, but wisdom is using a pencil – paraphrasing from where I first saw or heard the phrase. Today, the delete key can easily change an entry, rather than causing a disagreement between every crossword fan in the vicinity!

Crosswords build more than just basic vocabulary skills. Crossword puzzles teach us to think about solutions, and often to rethink prior steps. Solving any crossword is a sense of accomplishment. Adding the last letter to a completed crossword is like clicking in the last piece of a puzzle or playing the last note of a solo. Crosswords, though they may seem like small accomplishments, are necessary for the same reason that card decks are popular among soldiers at war: morale and distraction – something the world needs in abundance.