Who isn’t familiar with – and tried to solve – the ubiquitous crosswords? It is traditionally believed that they were invented at the beginning of the 20th century either by a Brit, Victor Orville, or an American, Arthur Wynne. The first would have come out with the idea while imprisoned in a South African jail; the second had his “word-cross puzzle” published in 1913 on the Fun, a supplement of the New York World.

Italy was to enter this narrative only on the 8th of February 1925, when an “indovinello delle parole crociate” was published by La Domenica del Corriere, officially Italy’s first cruciverba. However, things may not be quite like that. According to many, the true father of the crossword puzzle was an Italian, Giuseppe Airoldi, who had his invention – a crossword without black squares – published in Il Secolo Illustrato, a daily based in Milan, on the 14th of September 1890, 23 years before Wynne’s own crosswords.