Nowadays everybody knows that people are very busy and don’t have much time to spare. Sometimes it’s only the weekend and I think that every day-off needs some special planning. The English say: "Who knows how to work, knows how to rest". I think it’s true. In my view rest is as important as work. So I try to treasure every hour and think of the ways of having a good time in the best way possible for me. I prefer to spend my free time with the people whose company I always enjoy. I also like to spend my spare time alone, when I’m tired and haven’t got any desire to talk to anybody, very often I want to get away from noisy streets and go to the countryside and change the scenery. On the other hand I may go to different entertainment centers such as disco clubs, art centers including cinema, theatre, concerts halls, etc. There are people who want to broaden and enrich their knowledge during their free time. I’m among them; I go to the library or reading-hall where I can find a lot of books written by my favourite writers and poets. I must add that I never have enough time to enjoy reading and more often read a book or a magazine late in the evening. Or I can go to the museums and picture galleries where I can see the works of well-known painters and sculptors of all times. I don’t forget the computer – my greatest helper in searching for knowledge. If you want to be strong and healthy, go in for sports. There are many sports clubs, swimming-pools, gymnasiums and sport grounds for everybody who loves sports. Sport will make you not only healthier and stronger, but kinder, more sociable, cheerful and even wiser. Sport will give you its strength and energy and you’ll become a greater admirer of life with all its problems and wonders. (As for me I ...) Moreover, there are a lot of people, who prefer less energetic activities, such as chess, cards, crosswords. And don’t forget about hobbies. You should have at least one, it’ll help you to relax, dream and enjoy lifer. There are so many hobbies to choose: painting, computer programming, photography, fishing, gardening, cooking, walking, learning languages, collecting something and what not. It’s a pleasure to see lots of things made with your own hands, to look through a large collection of old and rare coins, books or stamps, to present your friends with the pictures and drawings created by yourself, to amuse everyone with your green winter garden at home. So, look around more carefully and you’ll find your own and the only one (or even more). Hobbies give people moments of pride and excitement but take a lot of time, energy and even money. Tastes differ and if you have chosen a hobby according to your character and taste you are lucky. (So my hobby is ...) Travelling is also a good way to spend my spare time. Visiting new places, seeing sights and meeting new people is a very exciting and useful relaxation. I can go hiking. In summer I like to be outdoors from morning till night, sunbathing, walking barefoot on the grass. My family or my friends are the very people to go with to the riverbank, to the forest or to the seashore. It's really wonderful to put up a tent, make a fire and spend time in a picturesque place. People are dreamers, our dreams are different but each person chooses his own way of spending free time, either passive or active. In any case leisure should be refreshment and a source of inspiration.
A crossword puzzle is a game of words where the player is given a hint and the number of letters. The player then fills in a grid of boxes by finding the right words. Liverpool journalist, Arthur Wynne invented the first crossword puzzle.Arthur WynneArthur Wynne was born on June 22, 1871 in Liverpool, England. He immigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen. He first lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and worked for the Pittsburgh Press newspaper. An interesting side-note, was that Wynne also played violin in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.Later, Arthur Wynne moved to Cedar Grove, New Jersey and started working for a New York City based newspaper called the New York World. He wrote the first crossword puzzle for the New York World, published on Sunday, December 21, 1913. The editor had asked Wynne to invent a new game for the paper's Sunday entertainment section.View a copy of Arthur Wynne's first crossword puzzleWord-Cross to Cross-Word to CrosswordArthur Wynne's first crossword puzzle was initially called word-cross and was diamond-shaped. The name later switched to cross-word, and then as a result of an accidental typo the hyphen was dropped and the name became crossword.Wynne based his crossword puzzle on a similar but much older game played in ancient Pompeii that translated from Latin to English was called Magic Squares. In Magic Squares, the player is given a group of words and has to arrange them on a grid so that the words read the same way across and down. A crossword puzzle is very similar, except instead of being given the words the player is given clues.Arthur Wynne added other innovations to the crossword puzzle. While the first puzzle wasdiamond-shaped, he later invented horizontal and vertical shaped puzzles; and Wynne invented the use of adding blank black squares to a crossword puzzle.The crossword puzzle in a British publication was published in Pearson's Magazine in February 1922. The first New York Times crossword was published on February 1 1930.First Book of Crossword PuzzlesAccording to the Guinness Book of Records, the first collection of crossword puzzles was published in the USA in 1924. Called The Cross Word Puzzle Book it was the first publication by a new partnership formed by Dick Simon and Lincoln Schuster. The book, a compilation of crossword puzzles from the newspaper New York World, was an instant success and helped to establish publishing giant Simon & Schuster, who continue to produce crossword books to this day.
