Arthur Wynne

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Arthur Wynne (1862 - 1945), born Liverpool, England, was a British editor and puzzle constructor in his home country and the United States of America. He invented the crossword puzzle in 1913.

He worked for the New York World, and one day was asked to invent a new game for the paper. Wynne thought of a game he had played in his childhood called "Magic Squares" and soon came up with the crossword puzzle, which was first issued in the December 21, 1913 issue of the World.

It was originally called a Word-Cross Puzzle and was diamond shaped and had no black spaces. Soon, it became cross-word then crossword, and had black spaces.