In Black & White

In 1913,when journalist Arthur Wynne created the first crossword puzzle,he called it Word-Cross. But a typesetting error gave it the name that it carries today. The diamond shaped,hollow-centered puzzle that was created by Wynne for the Sunday edition of the New York World,gradually altered to the form that we see today. Ever since,be it through school magazines or daily newspapers,the puzzle has dominated many a morning hour.

Like it has for Colonel Deepak Gopinath. At precisely 8.30 am every morning,he posts the solution of the daily crossword on his blog,The Hindu Crossword Corner,complete with annotations and links. “I don’t remember exactly when I started solving it,but it must have been around the late 60s or early 70s,when I was in an engineering college at Coimbatore. A cousin of mine was into crosswords and I too got hooked,” Gopinath recalls. The avid blogger,however,laments the dearth of crossword-setters in India. “Most of them use pseudonyms and a lot of publications don’t even have setters.”

Some of these can be found on blogger and IT professional Shuchismita Upadhyay’s three-year-old site called CrossWord Unclued. It houses profiles of almost all the big names in Indian Crossword setting domain. The blog is a hit among the fans of the puzzle and offers everything that one may need to know about the game – right from tips to clues to patterns and trivia. Not surprisingly,Upadhyay’s name figures in Crossword’s Who’s Who list,which is a compendium of the big names of crossworders. Based out of Bangalore,Upadhyay tags the Indian crossword arena as a “niche segment of interest.” “Not everyone is passionate about solving. But in India,even setters are not very common. Most of the newspapers have syndication with organisations in the UK or the US,” she says.

But a look at the number of people who follow these bloggers could force a minor rethink. Upadhyay’s blog has around 250 followers and Col Gopinath’s blog sees more than 270 hits every day. “But there are hardly any crossword tournaments either,barring a few universities,where college fests keep it as fillers.”

Another popular weblog is of Amy Reynaldo’s. Diary of a Crossword Fiend inspired her to write one of the most popular books on the subject – How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. “I started writing Diary of a Crossword Fiend in June 2005. At that time,the only place to talk about crosswords online was the old New York Times forum,and it had a “spoiler rule” in place – you couldn’t talk about any of a puzzle’s specifics until it had been out for about 12 hours. I wanted to talk about the puzzle when it was fresh in my mind,so I launched a new community site.”