Open cloze

Open cloze

For questions 1-8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap.

The first crossword puzzle appeared in a New York newspaper in December 1913. It was created (1) a journalist called Arthur Wynne, who had been asked to come up with a new game for the paper's Christmas edition. His puzzle was diamond-shaped and, unlike modern crosswords, there (2) no black squares in it. Readers loved it, and within ten years crosswords (3) become so popular that some people were worried about them. One newspaper complained that fans were wasting hours (4) could be spent on more useful activities, and libraries reported that puzzle fans were keeping dictionaries (5) long that nobody else could use them. In Britain, crosswords took a little longer to catch (6), but by the 1930s most national newspapers were printing one every day. Today, millions of people still begin the morning with a crossword, and scientists have even carried (7) studies to find out whether regular puzzles help to keep the brain healthy. Whatever the answer, few fans are likely to give (8) their daily habit.