Looking for specimen with crossword puzzles

Khai Quang Nguyen

Hi everyone, 

I'm looking for type specimens that have crossword puzzles like this one example I found in Vu journal. It's a grotesque san-serif, having quite a distinct style. It's likely not letterings since the forms are quite consistent. But I'm still not sure if these comes from metal types. 



About the source: Vu is a French journal around the middle of 20th century (1928-1940) so the specimens could be around the same period or before, highly possibly coming from a French type foundry like Deberny & Peignot.

I wonder if anyone already stumble upon specimen with letters like this. Could be any source from around the world. Not even type specimens. Just things you see the resemblance are nice to examine too.

Thank you all!

George Thomas

In the beginning camera-ready art was produced by an artist and supplied to the publication. That would certainly be the most cost effective way of composing the puzzle since only one size would need to be produced, then sized by the publication to fit their mechanical needs. So it isn't likely that any commercial foundry produced such a set of type. I have never seen it in any American foundry specimen.
As for your sample, that isn't from foundry type; it is lettering. An examination shows accepted standards of letter heights relative to other letters a foundry would produce hasn't been followed.
If today was in the 1930's and I was a crossword puzzle producer I could set up a set of tiles with letters of the alphabet on them so I could quickly assemble a complete puzzle as camera-ready art. Cheap and efficient.

John Savard

If they were running a syndicated crossword puzzle, then indeed they wouldn't have typeset it themselves. But while that's common practice for many American newspapers, I can't be sure they did that in France.

The playing card types - those can be found in many specimen books - in the adjacent Bridge puzzle might be a clue, had there been a possibility the crossword puzzle was made with type.

Since the letters in the crossword puzzle look very nearly identical, if it is lettering, it must have been done with some kind of lettering guide, like the rulers made by Wrico, or even with something like Leroy. Looking closely, I see that the ends of the lines of the letters are rounded, so that is possible. (I guess my point here is this: when you say "lettering", most people will only think of freehand lettering, and the crossword puzzle is obviously not an example of that. So you should have been more specific.)

Craig Eliason

The layout "feels" like letterpress to me, and the playing cards on the same page closely resemble sorts I found in the ATF 1923 catalog:

A specialized set of sorts (with lines on bottom and right) would be a dead-easy way to compose crossword solutions like this. That said, I haven't yet found such letters in a specimen that I can remember.

Florian Hardwig

It’s indeed type, and exactly as you, Khai, assumed, it’s from Deberny & Peignot. The foundry shows this set in two variants in their 1930s specimen catalog under the header Les Mots Croisés.

These are special sorts, including blank, black, and numbered squares – and of course such with letters for clues and solutions – all delimited at the bottom and the right side, plus border elements for completing the puzzle at the top and left. As these capital letters have to work exclusively in this context, they don’t have to adhere to standard letter heights.

The specimen includes a description. Here’s my translation:

The photogravure plate, always made from a hasty drawing, cannot give a better result than the original, and requires special equipment that not everyone can afford. Our equipment enables the smallest printer, as well as the largest, to immediately produce the glyphs needed for this recreation that is so widespread today.

I don’t know how popular these sets were, but Khai’s example is proof that there was a real-world use for it. I can’t recall seeing examples from other foundries, but if you want to find more, I’d recommend to search specimen books from around 1910 to 1950. Make sure to start at the back, in sections with titles like “Miscellaneous”.
As for digital fonts, Johannes Lang issued CrossWord in 2012. This font is “a tool to build grids for crossword puzzles.” It doesn’t contain any letters, and it appears to be discontinued, but the Internet Archive has archived the specimen pdf.

Khai Quang Nguyen

Thank you all for the comments and huge bravo to @Florian Hardwig I know this must be type. Deberny & Peignot rocks! I will be looking for more references. The one from CrossWord is really interesting too, technically

I'm asking this because I'm also developing a project in ANRT with the same models. My reference is another source, called Phong Hóa, a Vietnamese satire journal from 1932. You can read a bit and see the pictures here. I would love if anyone has more references to discuss.

Few issues have crosswords and due to technical shortage, Vietnamese printers do not have these types from Deberny & Peignot (even most types used in the journal were from the foundry). Instead, they do it by hand. It's letterings but try hard to be very consistent like a typeface. (1st image)

I started to do a font family based on these models, starting with the most rounded, a bit expanded model. This also shows the integration of some cursive numerals from the original letterings, in 2 sizes. (2nd image)

If anyone's interested, it would help a lot to have feedbacks and suggestions for references to my font and also my research report.

Thank you all and have a great day!!!