Summer, beach, outdoor day. Someone swims, someone floats comfortably lying on the mattress. Children play football or beach volleyball. The lazy ones laze in the sun or under the umbrella, chatting with the neighbor or reading something. A book, a magazine or, even better, the Puzzle Week. The weekly is in fact one of the most loved by Italians, and certainly not relegated exclusively to the warm months. The rest on the sofa on Sunday, the commuter train ride, the lunch break of the employees: there are many opportunities to delight in the simple dots to connect or with the very difficult crossword puzzle of the magazine that made the history of Italian puzzles.
The history of the Puzzle Week since 1932
Precisely the crossword puzzle is a must of the Puzzle Week, almost from the birth of the weekly. We write almost because, despite the decades-long fame of some games and their creators, the Puzzle Week has now a truly enviable age: today is in fact its eighty-sixth birthday. He was born on January 23, 1932 by his dad, the Knight Giorgio Sisini. The Sardinian engineer Sisini had rented an apartment in Milan with his future wife, and it was there that he conceived the weekly.
As we said, the first issue hit newsstands on January 23rd. On the cover a crossword puzzle that revealed, through the arrangement of the black boxes, a portrait of the Mexican actress Lupe Velez. Many numbers were then sold after the first one which cost just 50 cents of lire. In fact, the Enigmistica Week deserves the merit of being the first magazine in the history of Italian puzzles, so much so as to have registered the trademark Crosswords, and to consider all the enigmistic magazines subsequently published in Italy as their own imitations. In this regard, the wording "is the magazine that boasts countless attempts at imitation". The phrase refers precisely to the magazines subsequently published, which originally they had been numbered up to the two hundred and fifth.
Typography and content
The magazine's typography has undergone some changes over the years, but has remained roughly the same. Colors alternate for the headboard blu, Verde e red. Inside of color instead, it has been introduced occasionally since 1995, more stable since 2010. On the cover there is always a crossword puzzle with a photo of a famous person, a man in even numbers and a woman for odd ones. The magazine's pride is the fact that it never accepted dealer, using it only for its own diffusion in the summer period.
Unmissable in all the issues of the Puzzle Week humorous cartoons with gods characters now become historical, like those of some games that for decades have assumed the same position in the magazine. Regarding the latter, it must be said that they are and have been worked out by the most important Italian enigmists. Impossible not to mention in this regard Piero Bartezzaghi (later replaced by his son Alessandro). Bartezzaghi was in charge of the free crossword puzzle on page 41, which for fans it was simply The Bartezzaghi. To this man goes the credit, with the support of Sisini, of having modernized the language of Italian puzzles. In fact, he introduced foreign words, trademarks, neologisms, references to current affairs and politics and the alphabet of 26 letters, which scandalized the purists of the Italian language.
The Puzzle Week in Italian culture
The fame of the Puzzle Week is indisputable. Its history is rich in quotes and tributes from the world of music and entertainment in general. In the XNUMXs, a comic character was introduced to the television program Those of the night, culturally formed with the weekly. There are also various songs and novels dedicated to the Week or in which it is mentioned. Then there are also many feature films in which they talk about it, such as Italian divorce, some movies with Toto and many others.
But why is the Puzzle Week so loved by Italians? The stories they have told us are so many, and they show us that the weekly is now one of the family. There are those who told us that they learned from their grandfather to do the crossword, who remembers when he was a child and played connect the dots with dad and who explains the exact order in which he solves all the number games. Then there are the most romantic ones, those who have learned to puzzle from their high school sweetheart, but also those who notice the compatibility with their wife by the fact that everyone loves different games of the Week: you certainly can't live with those of you. steal the crossword puzzles!
