Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

Crosswords are one of the most popular mental pastimes, combining an ancient puzzle with the logical crossing of words, testing general knowledge with deductive thinking. First published on 21 December 1913 in the American magazine „New York World”, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Krzysztof Oleszczyk describes the history of crossword puzzles in Poland, taking into account the broader global context. On the following pages of the reviewed publication, the result of many years of direct research (library and museum collections, hundreds of magazines, foreign-language studies), he describes the place and role of crosswords in Polish socio-cultural life in a multidimensional description.