The American market for puzzles began in earnest in 1743.
Recent installments have discussed almanac riddles and newspaper riddles, but neither of these appeared on anything like a consistent basis. Almanacs were at best annual publications and often carried on only for a few years before their publishers lost interest and found other pursuits. Newspapers in the eighteenth century were almost all current-events coverage, with little patience for diversions.
The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle debuted in 1743, and its first issue included this puzzler:
For the Ladies
To you fair maidens, I address; sent to adorn your Life:
And she who first my name can guess, shall first be made a wife.
From the dark womb of mother earth, to mortals’ aid I come,
But e'er I can receive my birth. I many shapes assume.
Passive my nature. yet I’m made as active as the roe;
And oftentimes with equal speed, thro’ flow’ry lawns I go.
When wicked men their wealth consume and leave their children poor
To me their daughters often come, and I increase their store.
The women of the wiser kind did never yet refuse me;
And yet I never once could find, the maids of honour use me.
The lily hand, the brilliant eye, can charm without my aid;
Beauty may prompt the lover’s sighs. and celebrate the maid:
But let th’inchanting nymph by told, unless I grace her life,
She must have wondrous store of gold; or make a wretched wife.
Altho' I never hope for rest, with Christians I go forth,
And while they worship toward the east, I prostrate to the north.
If you suspect hypocrisy, or think me insincere,
Produce the zealot, who like me, can tremble and adhere.
The answer, published in the second issue, was “needle.” As monthly entertainment, magazines were a more natural fit for puzzles. Withholding answers from one issue until the publication of the next was a simple trick to encourage regular readership that’s still followed today.
Yet the reign of the riddle was already coming to an end. In 1740s England, puzzles were shifting away from riddles toward letter-manipulation exercises (anagrams, beheadings, charades, and such),. By the 1750s, that trend had spread to the American colonies. After the war, such periodical puzzles exploded.
For a while, word puzzles were considered primarily a woman’s art. As Susanna, reader of Boston Magazine, wrote in 1784:
It is well known that our sex have long been the admirers and framers of enigmas. … I vist in almost every family in town, genteel and vulgar, and from lady down to Dorothy my maid, every female understanding has been excercised in the discovery of those which you have published.
This attitude could cut both ways, howevdr. While women were delighted to see “the female understanding” so represented, those who considered themselves serious men with serious tastes disdained such fare. Here’s a letter by “Observer” to Boston Magazine, published one year earlier. “Observer” is a gender-neutral name, of course, but I feel like the second word of his complaint gives us a clue to his perspective:
But, Gentlemen, I must honestly confess, that the Enigmas, Riddle, and Rebus, rather disgusted me; they are too trifling to employ the time and attention of any, except those whose Taste is too depraved to deserve being pleased. I find that many of my acquaintance are of the same opinion, and we wish never to see any more of them.
More than two centuries later, the current Boston Magazine is still publishing crosswords, so, uh, sorry, Observer. It seems Susanna's sensibility won out.
Though these days, the idea of puzzles as “primarily womanly entertainments” is about as remote as the idea of their signaling “depraved tastes.” Unless you're talking about word games like Lewdle.
Next: Word games like Lewdle!