TL;DR: The crossword was born on December 21, 1913 in New York, in the newspaper New York World, under the name Word-Cross, authored by Arthur Wynne. It arrived in Brazil in the 1920s through the magazines Tico-Tico and Coquetel. It became a Sunday newspaper ritual in the 1950s. It reached its peak in magazines in the 1970s and 1980s with Coquetel. It migrated to digital in the 2000s. It came back with editorial rhythm in the 2020s.
Every crossword you play today, in newspaper, magazine or app, in any language, descends from a single grid published on December 21, 1913. It was a Sunday supplement of the New York World. The puzzle was called Word-Cross. The author was a British journalist named Arthur Wynne. The grid had a diamond shape and no black squares.
In 100 years, the crossword crossed languages, watched editorial empires rise and fall, became a family ritual, retreated in the 1990s, and is now in another wave. The story in Brazil has five chapters.
Chapter 1, 1913 to 1924, Word-Cross becomes crossword. Arthur Wynne was born in Liverpool, moved to Pittsburgh at 19, and in 1913 worked as the puzzle editor of the New York World. The newspaper owner wanted something new for the Sunday supplement. Wynne remembered a childhood game called Magic Square and drew a diamond-shaped grid, with words crossing each other.
The first Word-Cross came out on December 21, 1913, with 32 clues. A proofreading error the following week swapped Word-Cross for Cross-Word. The name stuck. In 1924, the publisher Simon & Schuster released the first crossword book. In three months, it became a bestseller. The puzzle was already a craze in the United States.
Chapter 2, 1920s and 30s, the crossword arrives in Brazil. The Brazilian crossword started in children's and adult magazines of the 1920s. The magazine O Tico-Tico, aimed at children, published crosswords from mid-decade. The first dedicated puzzle magazines appeared in the late 1920s and early 30s.
It was in this period that the Brazilian crossword gained its identity. No two-letter words (the American tradition allows them, the Brazilian does not). Rhythmic black blocks. Prose clues instead of cryptic clues in the style of the London Times. An editorial accent of its own that has survived for 100 years.
Chapter 3, 1950s and 60s, the Sunday newspaper ritual. The big newspaper crossword consolidated in the middle of the 20th century. The major Brazilian newspapers (Folha de S. Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo, O Globo, Jornal do Brasil) opened a fixed space for the Sunday crossword. It was a family ritual: the newspaper opened, someone with a pen, the coffee getting cold.
The 15×15 format settled in this era. Room for theme, for wordplay, for an uncommon word. It fit the folded newspaper page. By the mid-1960s, it was unthinkable for a big Brazilian newspaper not to have a Sunday crossword.
Chapter 4, 1970s and 1980s, the Coquetel era. Coquetel, a puzzle publisher founded in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro, lived its golden era in the 1970s and 1980s. Coquetel's crossword magazines became part of the Brazilian cultural furniture. A newsstand without a Coquetel magazine was not a newsstand. A waiting room without a Coquetel magazine was not a waiting room.
At the same time, Brazilian textbooks started to use crosswords as a pedagogical tool. School crossword, magazine crossword, newspaper crossword. Three live fronts in the same period.
Pull quote: Whoever was born before 1990 almost certainly remembers someone in the family who dedicated themselves to the Sunday crossword every weekend.
Chapter 5, 2000s and 2010s, the silence and the return. The 2000s and 2010s were quiet for the Brazilian crossword. Print newspapers shrank, the puzzle magazine shrank too. A generation of digital crossword apps in Portuguese appeared, but most followed the free-with-ads model: colored grid, dictionary-style clue, ads between puzzles. Fit, solved, forgot.
In the 2020s, an editorial return began. Apps with voice and care, outside the free-with-ads model. Themed crossword sites. Dedicated newsletters. The big Sunday crossword rhythm, which seemed lost, became a banner in some projects.
Cruzadinha BLA arrived on the App Store in May 2026 as part of that wave. App in Brazilian Portuguese, with clues written by people who love to read, Daily Mini 5×5, Big Sunday 15×15, archive by theme. No ads, no data collection, in the rhythm of the newspaper.
The grid changes little. The Word-Cross grid from 1913 would look strange today (diamond shape, no black squares), but the principle is the same: words that cross, clues that open the way. What changes is what fits in the clue, the publishing rhythm, and the type of editorial care.
The Brazilian crossword has always had its own personality. Prose clues, no two-letter words, rhythmic blocks. That way crossed the five eras and remains alive. Cruzadinha BLA is one of the ways for it to continue in 2026.
Common questions. Who invented the crossword? Arthur Wynne, a British journalist living in the United States. The first crossword came out on December 21, 1913 in the New York World, under the name Word-Cross. When did the crossword arrive in Brazil? In the 1920s, in children's magazines (O Tico-Tico) and the first dedicated puzzle magazines. The Brazilian crossword gained its own identity in that period: no two-letter words, rhythmic blocks, prose clues. What is Coquetel? A puzzle publisher founded in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro. It was the Brazilian crossword reference in magazines through the second half of the 20th century, peaking in the 1970s and 1980s. How is the Brazilian crossword different from the American? Three main traits: no two-letter words (the American allows them), rhythmic black blocks forming a visual pattern, and prose clues instead of cryptic clues. The Brazilian crossword inherited the structure from the American, but developed its own editorial accent.
Cruzadinha BLA is on the App Store, free. Download at https://apps.apple.com/app/cruzadinha-bla/id6769588425, or open the app page at https://bla.vc/apps/cruzadinha.
