"You are never famous until you've had your name in a crossword puzzle," she said. "There is a group of people who mail the puzzle to you when your name comes up in it."

THE VIRTUOSITY OF THE Times crossword stems from the independence of the three editors who have shaped it: Margaret Farrar, who was a dedicated pioneer from the pastime's beginnings and an arbiter of standards that still apply today; Will Weng, a former head of The Times's metropolitan copy desk, who ruled the puzzle roost from 1969 to 1977 and injected a broad streak of humor and unorthodox orthography, and Eugene T. Maleska, the present editor, an educator, poet and leading authority on the art who has made them, edited them, written about them and created the famous (or infamous, if you find them difficult) thread of connected words known as the stepquote, a quotation that cascades through the puzzle.

The origins of the crossword in the Times have rarely been examined. It's not the Pentagon Papers, but for devotees, its birth is a matter of interest. Why, at the beginning of World War II, when the world was exploding at its seams, was The Times fussing about a crossword?

It seems likely that a prime mover in this innovation was Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher, who enjoyed wordsmanship in many ways and was reported to have long been chagrined at the need to buy The Herald Tribune to do a crossword. But the first relevant document in The Times archives is a memo dated Dec. 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, to Sulzberger. It came from Lester Markel, the Sunday editor whose fascination with solutions for the cosmos did not seem to extend to crosswords, but who nonetheless conceded that they deserved space, considering what was going on in the world. His note referred to a number of meetings with Margaret Farrar, one of the pioneers of across-and-down, and reported on his conclusions:

"We ought to proceed with the puzzle, especially in view of the fact that it is possible that there will now be bleak blackout hours -- or if not that, then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind or other. (That, in turn, raises the qustion of whether we ought not to have a crossword puzzle in the daily also -- but that's a different story.)

"We ought not to try to do anything essentially different from what is now being done -- except to do it better."

Attached was a memo from Farrar. She wrote:

"The great majority of puzzle solvers want a large, challenging, rather hard puzzle, with terse dictionary definitions plus occasional literary, historical and news references. Such a puzzle gives an hour or two of real satisfaction to everyone who tries it.

"The smaller puzzle, which would occupy the lower part of the page, could provide variety each Sunday," she continued. "It could be topical, humorous, have rhymed definitions or story definitions or quiz definitions. The combination of these two would offer meat and dessert, and catch the fancy of all types of puzzlers.