: Every Major Newspaper in The World Has These Dharwad-Made Crosswords. Heres Why #IndiaNEWS #Karnataka A great vocabulary and intelligence are not the only prerequisites to solving a crossword. With

Every Major Newspaper in The World Has These Dharwad-Made Crosswords. Heres Why #IndiaNEWS #Karnataka
A great vocabulary and intelligence are not the only prerequisites to solving a crossword. With a little practice and a lot of patience, you can master this game too. At least that’s what my grandmother preached.

Every Sunday, she would religiously sit in her favourite spot on the sofa with a pencil and eraser in hand to solve crosswords published in a local Gujarati paper. She disliked taking help but didn’t let her pride get in the way of filling the tiny white boxes. It would inevitably become a family quiz. There was an unparalleled joy and satisfaction on her face when she got the answers correct.

Years later, the newspaper replaced crosswords to accommodate another segment, and I wondered if crosswords would become a thing of the past. With new entertainment options and the influx of digital games, a decline in crossword enthusiasts seemed like an eventuality.
Stanford alumnus, Sudheendra Hangal and John Temple, along with Hangal’s wife Jaya, feared the same.
They decided to explore the digitisation of crossword puzzles and the result was PuzzleMe — a software that can create or play puzzles. The beauty of the software is that clues can have multimedia forms such as voice notes, images, songs, YouTube and more.

The trio launched ‘Amuse Labs’ in 2013, and in the last eight years they have garnered millions of users from across the world. The software is free for non-commercial use and is being used by media houses, educators, corporates, children, medical experts and more.
“I met John, a journalism fellow and former editor of the Washington Post while researching the scope of digital journalism. We learnt about our mutual love for crosswords and started working together to develop a crossword application with the central theme of Hindustani classical music. I wanted to spread awareness on the same among the millennials and children. We kept the app more engaging, colourful and one that was an immersive multimedia experience. We soon decided to build a software where users can make their own puzzles based on things they are passionate about,??? Sudheendra, who lives in Dharwad, Karnataka, tells The Better India.
Being a journalist, John knew the importance of crosswords published towards the end of every paper. “After reading heavy news articles, crosswords and other games are a great way to unwind. Solving a crossword is a social activity where a family sits around the breakfast table and solves the clues together. The Internet breaks down the walls of distance and our software offers multiplayer features too. So, a mother in Mumbai can play with her daughter living in Delhi.