The "LDub's Extra Credit Questions Revealed!!" Story

One of the many crossword puzzles I made ... online.

It was an ordinary day.  Talking to a friend about the crossword puzzles we used to make when we gave tests to our students in high school.  The crossword puzzle was a popular method of giving a test or quiz, since it was so different than what many other teachers did for testing the knowledge that their students had obtained during their lessons.  At times I would also break my students into pairs based on drawing names from a box and allow two of them to work on a test.  I found that by varying my testing techniques they studied more for my quizzes.  But, the piece de resistance of my quizzes was the extra credit questions I asked.  Never had anything to do with the subject matter, but my students could raise their grade by one full grade if they knew all the answers.  And, they loved them!  Questions such as: 

• What color tie did I have on yesterday?
• How many friends did my kids take on vacation with us last year?'
• What color is red?
• How many pencils are in a gross?
• What's your favorite class?
• What's your favorite number?
• How good a baseball player was I?
• What time do I arrive at school?
• What kind of car do I drive?
• What's your mother's maiden name?

Now, I always assembled enough questions that they could raise their grade a few points in case they may have missed a question of two on my test.  Hey, I had very few perfect tests when I was a student and still remember that.  I wanted even the worst student in my class to have a chance to be perfect in something.  

The clues for those that care to try.  Click on to enlarge.

Only thing they gripped about was when I had my own childreen in their class and they probably knew a few more of the bonus questions.  But, getting back to my crossword test, it used to take hours to make my own crossword puzzles until computers arrived and I found a website that did it for me.  There were many times when I thought about who ever invented these torturous devices called crossword puzzles.  

A recent Times puzzle.

Found out his name was Arthur Wynne who was a writer for the New York World newspaper.  In 1913, while trying to come up with a different type of game for the newspapers Christmas edition, he came up with a way to adapt the "word squares" his grandfather had taught him when was a boy.  In a "word square" all the words in a square had to read the same horizontally and vertically.  Not sure how you would do that, but he did find a new puzzle that had different "across" words and "down" words.  He called his new puzzle a "Word-Cross".  It debuted Sunday, December 21 and was a hit.  It was so popular that he had to make more.  Then a month after the first puzzle appeared the typesetters at the newspapers inadvertently typed it as the "Cross-Word" puzzle.  Became even more popular.  Then, the newspaper tried to drop the puzzle since it was so hard for the typesetters to print on the presses.  There were so many irate readers they had to continue it. Then in 1924 a Columbia University graduate by the name of Richard Simon was having dinner with his Aunt Wixie when she told him how much she loved doing the World's crossword puzzles.  His idea was to make a book of crossword puzzles so he talked to his college friend Lincoln Schuster and before long they were in the office of the World newspaper asking to buy their best crossword puzzles so they could print them in book form.  Paid them $.25 a puzzle and printed "The Cross Word Puzzle Book."  

Part of two pages in my daily newspaper.

It was an instant success!  The pair became a major publisher (the 2nd largest publisher on earth today)!  Then in the late 1930s the craze began to fade. Puzzle clues became too predictable.  All along the NY Times declined to print puzzles saying they were a primitive form of mental exercise and didn't see a need to print them.  But, The New York Times had a few crossword fans on their staff and with the advent of WWII, they decided to give them a try to increase business and give war weary readers something new.  Well, you know the rest.  The "New York Times" crossword puzzle is a legend.  They claim it takes the average puzzler half an hour to solve their daily puzzle; 2 hours for the Sunday puzzle.  Did you know that the puzzles get progressively harder as the week goes on with the Sunday the toughest since people had more free time on Sunday.  Constructing the puzzles took much more time to create than to solve with many puzzles taking 10-12 hours to design.  They also went to great lengths to avoid offensive words; no using words such as "bra" or names of illegal drugs with limited use of words such as "ale" and "rum".  Check out your local paper and see if it carries a crossword puzzle.  My paper has a daily page covered with all kinds of puzzles.  But, I prefer to watch "Jeopardy" instead of doing crossword puzzles.  Can't imagine how long it takes to make the clues for that show.  They ought to try some of my old extra credit questions.  Might have a chance of knowing a few answers the night they use the clue category: LDub's Life.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.