"Early American Word Puzzles"

I'm gonna just take it easy on this one.

My original intention for today’s post was to shorten and supplement Will Shortz’s work on “Early American Word Puzzles” for Word Ways, the way I did for his history of “Early British Word Puzzles” a while back. But I’m a bit tired and could use a breather. So here are links to the four-part history, very quick summaries, and a few of my favorite excerpts:

Part One (Pre-Revolutionary)

Part Two (Post-Revolutionary to 1800)

Part Three (Early 1800s)

Part Four (1830 to the Civil War): Deletion and juggling of letters, subject-specific charades, decline of literary magazines, boomeranging of family and general interest magazines, growth of children's magazines.

This has also served to remind me that—as is sadly typical for me—I’m behind on correspondence with a few people, including Mr. Shortz himself. I’ll be correcting that today!

Tomorrow, a few more odds and ends from that Word Ways issue, including astronaut palindromes and a set of dictionary-enders titled “My Last Words.” ’Til then!