"Criss Cross Quiz Criss Cross Quiz was a quiz programme that combined the game noughts and crosses with general knowledge questions and aired on the ITV network from 1957 to 1967. It was produced by Granada Television. The programme was presented by Jeremy Hawk from 1957 to 1962 and Barbara Kelly from 1963 to 1967. The series was based on an American show entitled ""Tic Tac Dough"" which ran from 1956 to 1959 and was revived in 1978. Additionally, a children's version of the show called ""Junior Criss Cross Quiz"" was produced starting in 1957 (the same year the adult"
"each letter he would include in the game. He included only four ""S"" tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy. Butts initially called the game ""Lexiko"", but later changed the name to ""Criss Cross Words"", after considering ""It"", and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game ""Scrabble."" In 1948, the game was trademarked and James"
"puzzle one of the long clue/answer combinations read ""Title for 39-Across tomorrow"" = MISTER PRESIDENT. The remarkable feature of the puzzle is that 39-Across could be answered either CLINTON or BOB DOLE, and all the Down clues and answers that crossed it would work either way (e.g., ""Black Halloween animal"" could be either BAT or CAT depending on which answer you filled in at 39-Across; similarly ""French 101 word"" could equal LUI or OUI, etc.). Constructors have dubbed this type of puzzle a Schrödinger or quantum puzzle after the famous paradox of Schrödinger's cat, which was both alive and dead"
"general knowledge questions, frequently involving puns or other wordplay, that were displayed on a large electronic marquee, similar to one found on a pinball's backbox display. The players were shown blanks on the display's bottom line denoting the number of words and letters in the answer. A clue then crawled across the display's upper line. If no team buzzed in once the clue was revealed, letters of the answer then filled in at random as time progressed. For example, with the clue ""He's center and he's square"", and blanks displaying ""#### #####"", the correct answer is ""Paul Lynde"". James occasionally"
"American Crossword Puzzle Tournament The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is a crossword-solving tournament held annually in February, March, or April. Founded in 1978 by Will Shortz, who still directs the tournament, it is the oldest and largest crossword tournament held in the United States; the 2009 event attracted nearly 700 competitors. The 40th annual tournament took place on March 24-26, 2017. For its first 30 years the contest was held at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut, but owing to increasing popularity, in 2008 it moved to the larger Marriott Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn, New York. In 2015 the tournament returned"
"was scored for choosing the most popular answer to a question. Contestants could also earn ""Pit Passes,"" which would come into play in the Pitfall round. One pass was awarded for a contestant's first, third, and fifth points, for a maximum of three per game. Play continued for a maximum of five minutes. The first contestant to reach five points, or the one who was in the lead when time ran out, won the game and advanced to the bonus round, known as the Pitfall round. The champion attempted to cross a bridge composed of eight numbered sections in under"
"the letters of the word. For example, if the scrambled word was ""MAS"", and the clue was ""America's Uncle"", contestants would push 7-2-6 to spell ""S-A-M"". Contestants would get points depending on how quickly they punched in the right answer, starting at 1,000 and counting down as time went on. After each word was revealed, some letters of the word would be circled. When four words have been played, the circled letters would be shown again, along with a cartoon with a caption. Contestants would have 10 seconds to unscramble the circled word, which would fit into a humorous phrase"
"round was called the ""Smush Quad"", a four-part clue worth three points. The contestant with the lowest score at the end of each of the first two rounds was eliminated from the game. Round three was called the ""Smush Chain."" Clues were given one at a time to a smush that would grow progressively longer. To score, the contestant must buzz in and recite the entire chain, starting at the first clue. A total of seven clues were asked, the first of which served as the base of the smush, and was not a smush in itself. For example, the"
"Cross. After Cross was earned, random squares were given with every correct answer until either a viewer or a contestant got Bingo. There were two possible outcomes as to the end: The contestant with the most money then went to a memory board, where he or she had to reveal two matching squares to get a certain prize, and then he or she had the option of taking away the prizes or risking them for more the next week. Risk ran from July 2001 to February 2002. Draw numbers started from where Telebingo numbers left off. The show was on"
"Times"" from 1952–1999, but not more than one every other week. Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon took over for the NYT in 1999. A similar puzzle, called a Trans-O-Gram, by Svend Petersen, and later, Kem Putney, appeared in ""National Review"" from 1963–1993. Trans-O-Grams were often themed puzzles, with clues related to the quote. The name Duo-Crostic was used by the ""LA Times"" for puzzles by Barry Tunick and Sylvia Bursztyn. Charles Preston created Quote-Acrostics for the ""Washington Post"". Charles Duerr, who died in 1999, authored a many ""Dur-acrostic"" books and was a contributor of acrostics to the Saturday Review. Acrostic"
"jackpot instead of being awarded directly to the contestant. The original 1984-90 version was the very first successful ""board-game-turned-game-show"" in history, the second was ""Family Game Night"" on The Hub (now Discovery Family) from 2010 until 2014 and the third was ""Celebrity Name Game"" (Based on the board game ""Identity Crisis"") from 2014 until 2017. For three months in 1985, contestants not only had to guess each word correctly, but also had to spell the word one letter at a time. Similar to the format used during the first week, each correct letter added money to a pot: Regular squares"
"In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game, bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game (including the distribution of letters) unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the ""premium"" squares of the board and simplified the rules; he also changed the name of the game to ""Scrabble"", a real word which means ""to scratch frantically"". In 1949, Brunot and his family made sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, a section of"
"major evening dailies (""Aftonbladet"" and ""Expressen"") publish a weekly crossword supplement, named ""Kryss & Quiz"" and ""Korsord"" respectively. Both are available as paid supplements on Mondays and Tuesdays, as part of the ongoing competition between the two newspapers. In typical themed American-style crosswords, the theme is created first, as a set of symmetric long Across answers will be needed around which the grid can be created. Since the grid will typically have 180-degree rotational symmetry, the answers will need to be also: thus a typical 15×15 square American puzzle might have two 15-letter entries and two 13-letter entries that could"
"the subsequent move to Brooklyn. Dr. Fill, a computer program, has been an unofficial competitor in every contest since 2012. American Crossword Puzzle Tournament The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is a crossword-solving tournament held annually in February, March, or April. Founded in 1978 by Will Shortz, who still directs the tournament, it is the oldest and largest crossword tournament held in the United States; the 2009 event attracted nearly 700 competitors. The 40th annual tournament took place on March 24-26, 2017. For its first 30 years the contest was held at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut, but owing to increasing"
"Elizabeth Kingsley Elizabeth S. Kingsley (née Seelman) (1871 – June 8, 1957) was an American puzzle constructor, famous as the inventor of the double-crostic. Kingsley was born in Brooklyn and attended Wellesley College (Class of 1898). While she was working as a teacher in Brooklyn in 1933, she created the double-crostic, a form of acrostic puzzle that includes features of a crossword puzzle, and eventually sold it to the ""Saturday Review"". Michelle Arnot describes how she invented it, after a Wellesley reunion at which she ""despaired that students embraced twentieth-century scribblers like James Joyce"":Tailoring a crossword grid, she stretched its"
"CH in the ""Collins Scrabble Words"" lexicon. In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called ""Lexiko"". The two games had the same set of letter tiles, whose distributions and point values Butts worked out by performing a frequency analysis of letters from various sources, including ""The New York Times"". The new game, which he called ""Criss-Crosswords,"" added the 15×15 gameboard and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day."
"diagonal line). A special ""joker card"" could be played once in each game by either contestant, reversing each square on the board so that all crosses became noughts and vice versa. A bonus was awarded for a full board of noughts or crosses, after which each square on the board would be randomised. Question styles generally included puzzles, ""true or false,"" or ""identify the picture"". The last round of the show before the winner was declared was a special ""wrong answer round"" in which aim was for the contestants to give as many ""incorrect"" answers as they could within 60"
"by mail, began in the early 1970s. A promoter of packaged vacation tours called American Holiday Association (AHA) decided to use a puzzle contest to publicize its holiday packages. The puzzle contest proved so popular, that eventually AHA dropped its vacation business and became exclusively a puzzle contest promoter. The best-known of the AHA contests was their BINGO format word grid. In the first round the player had to fill in 5 words into the 5x5 grid, meshing with the word BINGO that had already been filled into the left column. Since there were only 2 words in the word"
"not won. Any couple who won five consecutive games received a new car. On March 3, 1980, the format was overhauled. Two individual contestants, one a returning champion, competed in a straight quiz. Three categories were in play in each game. Two of the categories were selected by the players before the game, with each player selecting one that they felt they knew the most about. The third category consisted of random general knowledge questions and was called Potluck. A round started with a category being determined by a randomizer, and two questions were asked in that category. The challenger"
"United States Open (crosswords) The United States Open was a crossword puzzle-solving tournament that lasted from 1982 to 1986. Sponsored by Games Magazine and directed by Will Shortz, it attracted thousands of potential competitors and was, along with the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, one of the two largest crossword tournaments in recent decades. A qualifying puzzle ran in Games Magazine. Solvers of the puzzle could decide whether they wanted to be Nonparticipants or Participants. Nonparticipants with correct solutions were eligible for a random drawing, the winner of which would receive a cash prize. Participants with correct solutions were mailed four"
"as part of a promotional campaign, and both remain hosted on the publisher's website. In January 2004, it was announced on the live television program Good Morning America that hundreds of thousands of people had participated in the original challenge, and that 40,000 people had successfully completed it. Though the official ""prize"" was given out at that time, the web versions of the quests were never closed, and have remained active ever since. The ""original version"" involved deciphering a series of cryptic clues at the publisher's website. Those wishing to solve the quests were required to examine the U.S. version"
"Charade Quiz Charade Quiz was an American game show hosted by Bill Slater which aired on the DuMont Television Network Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET from November 27, 1947, to June 23, 1949. In this 30-minute program, viewers requested to see something performed by panelists through charades. If the panelists failed to perform the stunt, the viewer received $15. Episodes featured ""a regular slate of actors with a panel of four trying to guess what they were pantomiming."" Bill Slater was the program's master of ceremonies. Victor Keppler was the producer, and Henry Alexander was the director. A review in"
"be a combination of ""belly laugh"" and ""Afghanistan."" Rapid-fire clues are presented in which the answers smush together. The first contestant to buzz in with the correct answer scored points, but an incorrect answer gave the opposing contestants a chance to take a guess. Round one featured two-part clues which created two answers to be smushed together. Each correct answer was worth one point. Later in that round, the remaining clues were visual clues. Round two had three-part clues with three answers smushed together, called ""Smush Tris"", with each correct answer worth two points. The final smush in the second"
"of the question. The final Tri Q question in the round was the ""Speed Challenge"". Summers presented another list of three names or items, but instead of a regular Tri Q question, Summers gave the contestants a clue. The contestants had to buzz-in and identify which item from the list matched the clue. The round lasted for 45 seconds and each answer was worth +/- $100. The contestant with the most money at the end of the round kept their money and moved onto the final round. If a tie occurred, one final clue was given. If the player answered"
"dating from the cryptic crossword pioneer Edward (Bill) Powys Mathers (1892–1939), who called himself ""Torquemada"" after the Spanish Inquisitor — for compilers to use evocative pseudonyms. ""Crispa"", named from the Latin for ""curly-headed"", who set crosswords for the ""Guardian"" from 1954 until her retirement in 2004, legally changed her surname to ""Crisp"" after divorcing in the 1970s. Some pseudonyms have obvious connotations: for example, Torquemada as already described, or ""Mephisto"" with fairly obvious devilish overtones. Others are chosen for logical but less obvious reasons, though ""Dinmutz"" (the late Bert Danher in the ""Financial Times"") was produced by random selection of"
"up to $3,000 in Round 3 if they had that amount or less; this was added with the redoubling of the dollar amounts for Round 3. In the closing round, the winning contestant attempted to fill in the remaining spaces of the show's crossword puzzle within ninety seconds. The champion would begin by calling out a number (""9 Across"", ""22 Down"", etc.) and would listen to the clue for that word. As before, the word had to be correctly guessed and spelled, but the only penalty for an incorrect guess was to have to pick the word again. If the"
"contestant was asked four questions about the UK, four about Australia, and four about the USA (for example, what was the name of this bridge; each correct answer was worth one point. In the second round, each contestant had two minutes to answer questions on a chosen subject, with each correct answer worth two points; returning champions were asked general knowledge questions. The final round was a four-minute buzz-in round; each correct answer was worth three points, but an incorrect answer resulted in losing three points. The player with the highest score won and came back the next week. In"
"host would give the panel a clue, for example, ""the secret concerns something that happened to [Contestant's Name]."" The host would then select a panelist to begin questioning. When the show debuted, each panelist had 15 seconds of questioning at a time, running through the panel twice, in order. Each segment of questioning which passed without the panelist guessing the secret won the contestant $10, for a top prize of $80. In mid-1954, the format changed to only once around the panel, with a $20 prize for each panelist stumped. The time limit was no longer fixed, and the buzzer"
"very difficult tiebreaker crosswords, many of which had deliberately tricky crossings and unannounced gimmicks (for example, the long entries in a puzzle might reveal that all of the across clues were in reverse order). The 250 solvers with the best scores on the tiebreak puzzles were invited to New York City to participate in the tournament. First prize at the tournament was $1500 and a six-foot-tall pencil. United States Open (crosswords) The United States Open was a crossword puzzle-solving tournament that lasted from 1982 to 1986. Sponsored by Games Magazine and directed by Will Shortz, it attracted thousands of potential"
"and four Wipeouts in each). The correct answers were indicated by checkmarks and the Wipeouts were indicated by crosses. In the beginning, the crosses appeared after an explosion; later they appear in a variety of ways. Correct answers were worth 25 points each in board one and 50 points each in board two. Also, after an answer, play immediately went to the next contestant. In addition, the ""Hot Spot"" was simply called the ""Bonus"" but otherwise acted the same. The lowest scoring contestant is eliminated at the end of the round. If the round ended in a tie, the tied"
"to reveal the question. The comedy came from an unexpected question following a seemingly straightforward answer. The resulting jokes often involved puns or wordplay; the answer ""The La Brea Tar Pits"" was the answer to ""What do you have left after eating the La Brea Tar Peaches?"", and ""9W"" was the answer to ""Mr. Wagner, do you spell your name with a V?"" Jokes would also be topical; for instance, ""Over 105 in Los Angeles"" (presumably referring to the temperature) instead led to ""Under the Reagan plan, how old would you have to be to collect Social Security?"" The longest"
"set of clues. These are called Schrödinger or quantum puzzles, alluding to the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment in quantum physics. At least ten Schrödinger puzzles have appeared in ""The New York Times"" since the late 1980s, and they have been published by independent constructors as well. The daily New York Times puzzle for November 5, 1996, by Jeremiah Farrell, had a clue for 39 Across that read ""Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper, with 43 Across (!)."" The answer for 43 Across was ELECTED; depending on the outcome of that day's Presidential Election, the answer for 39 Across would have been"
"interned at ""Games"" during his college summer vacations, where one of his pseudonyms was the anagram ""Art Pipeny""; he was expected to go on to work there full-time after college, but two days before his graduation, the magazine folded temporarily. In 1990 he also served on the four-person American team that won the International Crossword Marathon. In 1992 he was awarded CROSSW RD Magazine's ""Wynner Award"" for creating the best unthemed crossword puzzle of the year. After graduation, he moved to New York and was editor-in-chief of ""Herald Tribune Crossword Puzzles Only"", ""Large Print Crosswords"", and ""Crosswords & Other Word"