A word puzzle is a game or problem designed to test a person’s knowledge.
If you are thinking of word puzzles like those found in newspapers and activity books, then we’re on the same page. Word puzzles are for people of all ages, to test your knowledge and keep your brain in tip-top shape!
Here are some examples:
- Crossword puzzles
- Word searches
- Anagram word games
- Rhymes
- Trivia
The most popular word puzzle board game today is Scrabble (a favorite of mine). Other games for children include Bananagrams, Boggle, and Upwords.
These games can be incorporated into your languages arts lessons for reluctant learners; resisting workbooks and writing? No problem. Take off your teacher hat for these and let the learning progress naturally through gameplay.
But how did they come to be?
Here is the answer to that burning question.
A journalist named Arthur Wynne from Liverpool, England is the inventor of the popular word game, crossword puzzles. December 21, 1913 was the date his first puzzle appeared in a Sunday newspaper, the New York World.
Here is the world’s first crossword puzzle if you’d like to take a look!
By the 1920’s and 1930’s crossword puzzles were shared across Europe and America, changed slightly to suit their different styles; Europe’s puzzles were far more difficult in comparison.
Some time later word searches were invented by another journalist. The Spanish puzzle creator Pedro Ocón de Oro had his first word search printed in the Selenby Digest on March 1, 1968, in Norman, Oklahoma.
Other names for a word search now include word seek, word find, and word hunt. These word puzzles are popular in classrooms across North America. Try adding fall word puzzles to your morning work or early finisher rotation!
Looking for an activity to tie in to the history of word puzzles? Be sure to include journalism!
Consider crafting a classroom newsletter or activity book and ask each student to author a word puzzle using your chosen vocabulary words!