Who is Arthur Wynne?

"If you’re a stamp collector, you’d know all about Arthur Wynne," writes George Robinson in an article that appears on Pennsylvania's Bucks County News website.

Oh really?

In case you don't know who Arthur Wynne is, here's a hint...his claim to fame was to develop a new game for the entertainment section of the old New York World newspaper in 1913. He based it on “Magic Squares,” a game he remembers playing as a boy in Liverpool, England.

Still clueless? Give up?

Arthur Wynne was the originator of the crossword puzzle.

In 1993, the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp (shown above) which shows Wynne holding a pencil over the squares of his diamond-shaped puzzle.

According to the article, "The puzzle’s shape is strange because it doesn’t look like our modern-day crossword, not at all like the puzzle you’ll find in this week’s newspaper and other newspapers. The first puzzle squares were clustered, forming a triangular pattern."

You'll note it also didn't have any black spaces as shown here in Arthur Wynne's original crossword puzzle from December 21, 1913.

To read the entire article, click here.