LearningRx Reviews the History and Mental Value of Crossword Puzzles

December 21 is Crossword Puzzle Day and LearningRx, the world’s largest personal brain training company, is sharing some facts about the history of the day and the value of the word game.

• Crossword puzzles are said to be the most popular word game around the globe.
• The first known published crossword appeared in the Sunday newspaper, New York World, on December 21, 1913. It was diamond shaped and had no internal black squares.
• Cruciverbalism is a noun that means “the compilation of crosswords.”
• Originally, the “crossword” was called a “word-cross.”
• The Guinness Book of Records names “The Cross Word Puzzle Book” as the first collection of crossword puzzles. The book was published in 1924 by a new partnership between Dick Simon and Lincoln Schuster, and helped establish the duo as the publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster.
• According to MedicalNewsToday.com, in 2017, researched looked at 19 studies about brain-stimulating activities that may lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and discovered that doing crossword puzzles was one of several activities that had protective effects against the neurodegenerative disease.
• Crossword puzzles help build reasoning, spelling, vocabulary, memory, attention and word attack skills.