Many tributes to Stephen Sondheim (including ours!) have noted that he introduced British-style cryptic crosswords to American audiences. That's generally true... but there's a bit more to the story. 🧵 1/14

https://twitter.com/beyondwordplay/status/1464370622373449733

Let's go back to the birth of the crossword craze, which kicked off in 1924, when Simon & Schuster began publishing crossword books, edited by Margaret Farrar and her two less-remembered colleagues, Prosper Buranelli and F. Gregory Hartswick. 2/14

RIP to the great Stephen Sondheim, whose voracious interests included solving, constructing, collecting, and popularizing word puzzles. In the late '60s, his cryptic crosswords in New York Magazine introduced the puzzle genre to an American audience.

https://twitter.com/beyondwordplay/status/1326621910457749504

Look at this tabletop full of games and puzzles at Stephen Sondheim's Connecticut home, accompanying a 2017 NYT interview by fellow wordplay aficionado, @Lin_Manuel. nytimes.com/2017/10/16/t-m…

Any self-respecting wordplay site can serve up content on the day - but “day after Thanksgiving” wordplay? BW has you covered.

As you contemplate your leftovers, consider the humble TURKEY SANDWICH. So unassuming, and yet a subtle 14-letter isogram (no repeated letters). It is truly a “rare bird” which uses more than half the alphabet without repeating, but the plant-based among us can fly even higher, with the meatless TOFURKY SANDWICH (15), a brand name “Turkey alternative” giving us one more letter, though conspicuously missing a valuable “e”.

Welcome, everyone, to Beyond Wordplay's special coverage of the Super Bowl! We'll be featuring appropriate "supervocalics": words/phrases with the vowels AEIOU (and sometimes Y) once and only once. Just like the word "supervocalics," or our hashtag for the game, #Superbowlcalics. Let's kick things off with the Super Bowl matchup that everyone's anticipating: PATRICK VERSUS TOM (h/t @RoyLeban) #Superbowlcalics