On February 9, 1925, the first Estonian crossword, appeared in the newspaper Esmaspäev. The first person to solve it could claim a prize of 3,000 marks, a considerable sum at the time.

Several exciting prizes were also offered around this time for crossword solvers.

"For example, there was even a rabbit, a domesticated rabbit – whoever solved the crossword would get the rabbit. But there were also offers of consumables such as clothes pins, trips to the sanatorium, trips abroad, and a lot of offers of books and then new orders for crosswords," said Signe Heiberg, the National Library's public relations expert.

Crossword enthusiast Marika, who completed the first puzzle at the request of "Aktuaalne kaamera", said it was not easy.

"It does take a bit of time to work out the structure and what the names are nowadays, for example, female names, when you think that there are different names in use nowadays, there were different names then. But if you use a smartphone, I think it will be easier," she said.

Villu Tamme, a crossword creator, said the first one is a real puzzle because there are very few common letters, mostly either at the beginning or at the end of a word, and the rest you have to guess.

"I didn't bother to print it out, I solved it on the screen, and I got quite far. But I got completely stuck, so I looked at the correct answer. I don't think I could have solved it," he admitted.

Tamme said crosswords of this type are not very popular. Since the 1980s, so-called Scandinavian-style crosswords, where the questions are laid out in a grid, have become more popular.

The crossword craze has still not died out in Estonia. Every month around 30 crossword magazines are published, in addition to a dozen online.

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