This Week in History: November 15–21

How to Solve a History Crossword

You don’t need to be a history buff to finish this one. Every clue hands you a date and a short story, and the word bank lists all sixteen answers, so the real puzzle is matching each story to its word and fitting it into the grid. Here’s a good way in:

• Start with the blanks. Every clue here has a ___ in it. If you recognise the name or the phrase around the blank, the answer is staring right at you.
• Use the word bank as a checklist. Cross off each answer as it goes into the grid. With sixteen answers and only a handful left, the last few clues often solve themselves.
• Count the squares. The number in brackets is the answer’s length. Five answers in the bank are seven letters long, so counting squares narrows things down, but crossing letters finish the job.
• Read the grey lines. Most clues carry a second line in grey italics. It’s a bonus hint, often the detail that makes a date stick in your memory.
• Let the long answers do the heavy lifting. GETTYSBURG and PHONOGRAPH are ten letters each and STEAMBOAT is nine. Get one of those in and you’ll have letters for several shorter words at once.

New to crosswords? Our complete guide to solving crosswords covers clue types and fill strategy from the ground up.

About This Puzzle

The TWIH series splits the calendar into 52 weeks that land on the same dates every year, so this puzzle is worth pulling out every November. The This Week in History page shows the whole calendar and every week that’s ready so far.

This is a big week for Canada. British Columbia was born at Fort Langley, Wilfrid Laurier was born in Quebec, the Alaska Highway was opened in the Yukon, and Louis Riel, the Métis leader who founded Manitoba, was executed in Regina, a turning point the country still talks about. A Canadian engineer also helped change how the whole world tells time. It’s a big week for computers, too: in the space of a few days on the calendar you’ll find the first microprocessor ad, the patent for the computer mouse and the release of the first Windows.

Every date and detail in the clues was checked against museum, archive and encyclopedia sources before it went into the grid. A few needed care. Sandford Fleming didn’t invent standard time on his own; the plan the railways switched to in 1883 was drawn up by railway official William Allen, but Fleming was its best-known champion and pushed it around the world. Edison’s November 21 date is when the phonograph was announced, not when it was first built. And Apollo 12 touched down on November 19 in universal time, the date NASA uses.

Missed last week? This Week in History: November 8–14 runs from the discovery of X-rays to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like your crosswords packed with facts? Try the General Knowledge Crossword, or for something with no word bank at all, the Hard crossword It’s Coming Down.

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Puzzle Pack: Word Play & Trivia · Series: This Week in History