![]() It was shaped like a diamond, had no black squares, contained thirty-two words, and was called a word-cross puzzle. It scored a mild success, and the puzzle was made a regular feature of the paper. The present square shape and pattern of black-and-white squares, as well as the reversed name, were developed before 1920, when Mrs. Farrar, then Miss Petherbridge, and newly graduated from Smith, got a job as secretary to John O’Hara Cosgrave, editor of the magazine section of the Sunday World. One of Miss Petherbridge’s duties was to see that the puzzles appeared without typographical errors, which had long been a vexation to readers. A., an early crossword-puzzle fan, often called public attention to these errors in his famous column “The Conning Tower.”) Miss Petherbridge proved so good at preventing errors that she soon became the unofficial crossword-puzzle editor, and was even permitted to try her hand at making puzzles. In 1924, a couple of ambitious young men named Simon and Schuster, having made up their minds to start a publishing house, hit on the idea of bringing out a collection of unpublished Sunday World puzzles. They arranged to pay Miss Petherbridge and two colleagues seventy-five dollars for assembling fifty puzzles. By the time the puzzles were ready, Simon and Schuster had begun to doubt the pulling power of puzzles, and to avoid the risk of beginning their corporate existence with a flop, they brought out the book under an alias-the Plaza Publishing Company. As a selling gimmick, a freshly sharpened pencil was attached to each copy of the book, which sold for the then substantial price of a dollar thirty-five. ![]()
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