While we continue our short season break from regular interviews, please enjoy this bonus discussion I had with Natan last back in November.

It ran back then right after the main interview for Grammar Palusians who support the show.

If you'd like to get episodes like this when they first come out, you can sign up at patreon.com slash Grammar Girl.

Thank you. at patreon.com slash grammar girl. Greetings, grammar pelusians. I'm Minion Fogarty, and I'm here with Natan Last, author of

Across the Universe, this just wonderful book about crossword puzzles, the whole cross-world,

as they call it. And in the main section, we talked about

using computers to construct crosswords. We have, like, fun tidbits about Will Shorts and his

crossword patterned pajama bottoms. But in this, we're going to talk about the early history

of crossword puzzles. And Natan, welcome to the bonus section for the Grammar Pellusians.

Thanks. I'm excited for bonus content. Bonus content. Yes. So the first thing that surprised me is

that they originally were not called crossword puzzles. They were called word cross puzzles. What happened

there? That's right. Yeah, they were Arthur Wyn, the editor of the fun section of the New York world in 1913.

He had this idea for the word cross puzzle. And there was a hyphen word hyphen cross. And this was a big task for the typesetter.

So all the clues would be hand typeset, the grid would be hand-inked, and the title would be inked as well.

And the typesetter's who just were overwhelmed one day spun it on the access of that hyphen,

and the crossword was born.

Yeah, I never thought of that.

Like by hand, it would be tough to lay out a crossword puzzle in a paper.

Yeah, it's super, super tricky.

The early, for folks who really like comics, Ernie Bush Miller Jr., who drew Nancy,

was one of the very first crossword anchors, right?

He was in the art department at the New York World, and they weren't just black and white

...