On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist born in Liverpool, published a word-cross puzzle in the New York World. It had most features of the modern crossword, and it is usually cited as the first. An illustrator later reversed the name to crossword. Within a decade the puzzle was a national craze, though critics called it sinful and childish. In Britain, Edward Powys Mathers created cryptic crosswords in the mid-1920s, where each clue is also a wordplay puzzle.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.