Andrew Martin’s Reviews > Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle > Status Update

Interesting section about the negative critical response to the first crossword boom in a very work-vs-life-conscious post-war 1920s

“On a single day before Christmas 1924, 150,00 copies [of crossword puzzle books] left the shops for the fire-warmed, expectant hands of solvers. That year, three Simon & Schuster collections took the top three slots of the nonfiction bestseller list. Simon & Schuster has never, in the century since its founding, not had a crossword puzzle book in print.”