Elizabeth Kingsley facts for kids

Elizabeth S. Kingsley was an American puzzle maker. She is famous for inventing a special type of puzzle called the double-crostic.

Elizabeth S. Kingsley: The Inventor of Double-Crostics

From Teacher to Puzzle Creator

Elizabeth S. Kingsley was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1871. She went to Wellesley College and finished her studies in 1898. Later, she worked as a teacher in Brooklyn.

In 1933, while still teaching, Elizabeth came up with a new puzzle idea. She wanted to combine parts of an acrostic puzzle with features of a crossword puzzle. This new creation became known as the double-crostic.

How the Double-Crostic Puzzle Was Born

Elizabeth Kingsley was very creative. She took a crossword grid and made it into a rectangle. She then used a piece of writing from a favorite author. She filled the grid with words from this text. Each blank square in the grid was given a number.

After filling the grid, she took all the letters from the text. She then picked out letters to spell the author's name and the title of their work. These letters helped create a system of smaller puzzles, like an acrostic. This clever method led to her unique double-crostic puzzle.

Sharing Her Puzzles with the World

Elizabeth worked very hard and created 100 double-crostic puzzles. In March 1934, she showed her puzzles to Saturday Review magazine. They loved her idea!

The first double-crostic puzzle was published on March 31, 1934. Elizabeth then set up an office at the Henry Hudson Hotel. From there, she personally made a new puzzle every week. She also created a series of puzzles for Simon & Schuster. Later, she introduced an acrostic feature for The New York Times puzzle page.

She wrote puzzles for The New York Times from May 9, 1943, to December 28, 1952. Even today, this type of puzzle is still very popular with puzzle fans.