
	E-mail us at helicon@rm.com or telephone us on 08450 700300.


	Looking for help with one of our CD-ROM products? Visit our technical support section.

The world's favourite word game takes on a whole new dimension

Crossword puzzle statistics

40 million Americans play at least one crossword puzzle a week (one in seven nation-wide).
65–70 million Americans play crossword puzzles at least once monthly (one in four nation-wide).
65%–70% of crossword solvers are women (source: Forrester Research 1999).
The average income of crossword players in US $72,000 – the equivalent of about £49,000 (source: Forrester Research 1999).

Britons' passion for puzzles is equally as widespread, but did you know that cryptic crosswords are a British invention? They provide a double challenge: not only do they test the general knowledge, but they also require the puzzler to decode the clue itself.
The style of word-play in cryptic crosswords varies enormously, and the puzzle community will eagerly follow a publication, such as the Times, or a compiler, for their particular style.

The first puzzle was created by journalist Arthur Wynne, and printed in the New York World on 21 December 1913. It was wildly popular.
According to Wordcross, crossword puzzles were used in 1942 to recruit men and women who would be able to crack enemy codes – those who completed the Daily Telegraph puzzle in less than 12 minutes worked on the Nazi Enigma codes at Bletchley Park.
The New York Times ran one of the most controversial crossword puzzles ever in 1996, on election day. One of the clues read 'Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper', and two answers – Clinton or Bob Dole – were correct (source: Wordcross.net).

3D crosswords are devilishly difficult to set by hand. According to Horizon's CEO Dan Moran, a constructor manually set a 3D crossword in a 7 by 7 by 7 cube – but it took him five years. Horizon's software creates a puzzle in about 15 minutes.
Because the number of possible combinations for a 3D crossword is so enormous, even computers can't handle the job. But Horizon's software uses intuitive algorithms that instruct the computer to change tack when a particular solution begins to look like a dead end, or to rearrange the spaces to make a puzzle that's easier to create.
Horizon use a dual-processor PC running Linux to create the puzzles from wordlists.
Human input it still needed: Helicon's compiler has the final decision on the words and clues dran from their vast datatabases.

Game sites are some of the most popular and 'stickiest' sites on the Internet: Pogo.com, Gamesville.com, Uproar.com, and Sony's 'The Station' have over 12 million registered users combined, who spend an average of 45 minutes per visit.