He really outdid himself in this video on the early days of “word crosses”.
Esp. ironic was the NY Times crusade against them. Throw in rants from the pulpit, “won’t somebody think of the children” hysteria and more.
I think that one thing that made it such a craze was that larger cities had so many papers with each doing a crossword that the supply was larger than in the 80s, for example, when consolidation had reduced the number of papers (and increased their prices).