Adrienne Raphel wrote a book about crossword puzzles and was shocked to learn that they are barely over 100 years old. But crosswords are far from the only word games, which have been around probably as long as words have been written down. Or maybe even earlier, but how would we know? We do know that word squares go back to the Roman Empire, because they carved them in stone.
The ancient Romans loved word puzzles, beginning with their city’s name: the inverse of ROMA, to the delight of all Latin lovers, is AMOR. The first known word square, the so-called Sator Square, was found in the ruins of Pompeii. The Sator Square (or the Rotas Square, depending on which way you read it; word order doesn’t matter in Latin) is a five-by-five, five-word Latin palindrome: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS (“the farmer Arepo works a plow”).
The Sator Square is the “Kilroy Was Here” of the Roman Empire, scrawled from Rome to Corinium (in modern England) to Dura-Europos (in modern Syria). It’s unclear why this meme was such a thing. “Arepo” is a hapax legomenon, meaning that the Sator Square is the only place it shows up in the entire corpus of Latin literature—the best working theory is that it’s a proper name invented to make the square work.
Note how you can read the square horizontally or vertically, beginning in any corner. Raphel also gives us an overview of the rise of palindromes, acrostics, riddles, and various other puns at The Paris Review. -Thanks, WTM!
(Image credit: M Disdero)