Cross(word) ing the Atlantic with the FT’s first US puzzle

At the 45th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held in Connecticut earlier this month, the winner completed the championship puzzle in a time of 5 minutes 24 seconds.

Oliver Roeder solved it in 16 minutes 30. Out of 774 competitors, he finished 218th – which makes him amply qualified to set the Financial Times’s first US-style puzzle, published today.

Roeder, whose day job is FT senior data journalist based in the US, is that rare crossword breed — someone who loves and appreciates the finer arts of solving both British cryptic and US crosswords.

In an article for the FT magazine in January, he described the difference between them thus: “Solving an American puzzle is an exciting smash-and-grab job. Solving a cryptic is a sophisticated bank heist.”

The US was a pioneer of the crossword, along with Britain. In his book, The History of the Crossword, John Halpern (who sets for the FT as Mudd) suggests Arthur Wynne, the son of the editor of the Liverpool Mercury, was the father of the crossword.

He gets that accolade because, having emigrated to the US as a teenager, he created a series of word puzzles in a publication called New York World.

Such was the following they received that Richard L Simon and Max Schuster in 1924 published the first crossword puzzle book, an early output for what was to become the foremost US publishing empire.

Interactive crosswords on the FT app

Subscribers can now solve the FT’s Daily Cryptic, Polymath and FT Weekend crosswords on the iOS and Android apps and FT Weekend crosswords on the iOS and Android apps

The paths of British and US crosswords diverged over subsequent decades. In the UK, crossword publishers demanded of setters ever more mysterious clues. In the US, the shift was towards more grandiose, complicated grids, the clues being largely straightforward.

In a preface to Halpern’s book, New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz wrote: “Over time, Americans visiting Britain couldn’t make head or tails of their crosswords, and the British who saw our puzzles came to look down their noses at them.”

As Shortz notes, US crossword setters eventually became more creative, using wordplay and themes to tease and madden solvers. At the Connecticut tournament, competitors faced puzzles themed on confectionery and synonyms for the word idiot. Today’s crossword by Oliekop — Roeder’s pseudonym — is liberally doused with his mischievous sense of wordplay, among my favourites being 19 across.

But some things about US-style crosswords are unlikely to change. Unlike British crosswords, there is no number format after each clue. 1 across could be one, two, three, four words long. It’s up to the solver to work that out.

Expect, too, to find plenty of abbreviations, colloquialisms and onomatopoeia among Roeder’s solutions — something that is not unheard of in British crosswords but far more common stateside.

The FT will publish a US-style crossword one Sunday each month on ft.com/crosswordapp.