Photograph from NYT / Redux
She was called the “world’s supreme authority on cross-words.” Margaret (Petherbridge) Farrar, more than any other single person, is responsible for the crossword puzzle as we know it today. First as puzzle editor for the New York World and later the New York Times, she established the rules and set the standard.
Every week was the same. On Sunday the crossword puzzle appeared in the New York World, and by Wednesday dozens of letters were piled up in the Sunday Editor’s “In” basket. The crossword had a clue missing. The numbers were wrong. The puzzle asked for plant names known only to botanists and abbreviations that were little used. Puzzle fans were, well, cross.
If they had known the situation at the World, readers could have saved themselves the postage. It was true that the paper’s Arthur Wynne had invented the “Word-cross” in 1913, and it was true that for a long time the paper ran the only crossword puzzle in the country. But Wynne had left, and the job of puzzle editor had fallen to the lowest ranking person in the office. Puzzles weren’t even created in-house; they were sent in by readers.
Into this situation walked Margaret Petherbridge, a lifelong New Yorker and recent graduate of Smith College, Class of 1919. In addition to a dozen other responsibilities, she became the person who selected the weekly crossword puzzle from the pile. And the angry letters started coming across her desk.
Contributor, Nine Letters
Letters can always be filed away in an anonymous filing cabinet, but the criticisms of columnist Franklin P. Adams could not be ignored. A puzzle lover, almost every Monday morning he’d walk up to Margaret and point out to her all of the errors in the Sunday puzzle. He also had the annoying habit of publishing some of his criticisms in his column. Finally Margaret sat down with a puzzle, solved it, and found that the criticisms were actually fair. “Then and there,” she said later, “with my left hand on a dictionary and my right hand raised in the air, I took an oath to edit the cross words to the essence of perfection.”
Margaret did more than just edit. Over the years she established almost every basic rule that is used to construct first-ranking crossword puzzles today. For instance:
The puzzle must have an overall interlock. This means that there can be no groups or small islands of words that are separated off from the rest of the puzzle.
All letters must appear in two words—one across and one down.
The black and white squares must form a symmetrical pattern together.
Black squares cannot take up more than one sixth of the total number of squares and it is better that they number even less.
Two-letter words are not allowed. Also, clichés, variants, obsolete words, and words that are obscure should be avoided.
To Decipher, Five Letters
The way that Margaret edited a puzzle was to sit down and solve it. If the definitions were appealing and if the puzzle wasn’t too easy or too hard, she’d accept it for publication. Often she would change a clue to make it more interesting or because a similar clue had run in a puzzle the week before. Once she told a young puzzle constructor who was just starting out, “Crosswords are an entertainment. Avoid things like death, disease, war and taxes—the subway solver gets enough of that in the rest of the paper.”
Usually a person begins a puzzle by putting together a word list. Words that have the same number of letters are grouped together. Then the words are put randomly into the squares. Usually the puzzle corners are filled in first so that the black squares can be fitted around them. Longer words are placed first and then the shorter words are fitted in. When the diagram is finished the puzzle constructor starts working on the definitions.
Disrespectful, Four Letters
Even the greatest crossword puzzle editor of all time got a rude letter occasionally. One writer complained about her clue “Manager of the Globe Theatre.” He informed her that New York City’s Globe had not one but two managers and neither had a last name that fit the puzzle. Tactfully Margaret wrote back and told him the answer was Shakespeare.