Shirley and Chris are on the train. Listen to their conversation and fill in the missing information in the notes below.
Shirley: Chris, do you have the time?
Chris: Yes, it's 4:15 now.
Shirley: How long does it take us to get to Edinburgh?
Chris: I think there is still an hour to go. We will get there at 5:20.
Shirley: I see. What shall we do to kill the time?
Chris: Shall we play a crossword puzzle?
Shirley: OK. That's a good idea. Oh, Chris...
Chris: Yes?
Shirley: Do you know who invented the crossword puzzle and how crossword puzzles are created?
Chris: Well, the crossword puzzle was introduced in the Sunday supplement of the New York World newspaper in 1913. It was designed by Arthur Wynne. Mr. Wynne was inspired by Magic Square, a children's word game in which words are arranged vertically and horizontally. Wynne added empty squares and some clues.
Shirley: So that the player can deduce the words according to the clues?
Chris: Yes, by the early 1920s, crossword puzzles were standard features of almost every American newspaper.
Shirley: Yes, according to a report, many crossword puzzle books have been published since then.
Chris: In 1924, four crossword puzzle books were on the bestseller lists. Booksellers also experienced phenomenal sales of another type of book: dictionaries. Today, crossword puzzle makers each have their own techniques to challenge the skills of their players.
Shirley: Right, I know Eugene Waleska is a creator of the New York Times crossword puzzle. He begins with a theme and lists as many words as he can think of that loosely fit the theme.
Chris: Yes, birds, for example, might prompt pigeon-toed, goose-step, and turkey-trot. Then Waleska starts to fill in the grid with the long words first, avoiding words ending in J or beginning with X. He works first in the lower right corner of the grid, since it is harder to find a word that ends with a certain letter. Waleska says that when he started in this business, it took him several days to fit the words into a 15x15-square grid. Now it takes less than an hour.
Shirley: Let's play it and see how well we do.