Elizabeth Kingsley
Elizabeth S. Kingsley (née Seelman) (1871 – June 8, 1957) was an American puzzle constructor, famous for being the inventor of the double-crostic.Michelle Arnot describes how she invented it, after a Wellesley reunion at which she "despaired that students embraced twentieth-century scribblers like James Joyce":Tailoring a crossword grid, she stretched its boundaries to create a rectangle.In the style of an acrostic puzzle, these four words provided the first letters for a system of twenty-five anagrams.In March 1934, Kingsley left the pages at the offices of The Saturday Review of Literature... On a Tuesday, the contract was signed; and soon after, Kingsley set up shop at the Henry Hudson Hotel, where she personally crafted a weekly puzzle from her home office.Simon & Schuster gave her a series, and she introduced an acrostic feature for the Sunday Times puzzle page.