A strange little side quest
Zoom out from Tile Triple for a moment and the timeline gets surprisingly deep. Arthur Wynne published a diamond-shaped 'Word-Cross' in the New York World on December 21, 1913; the name later shifted to 'Cross-Word' and then 'crossword'. Another piece of context lands nicely beside it: Pac-Man went on sale in 1980, and its creator Toru Iwatani famously linked the character's shape to a pizza with a slice missing. The details change, but the appeal of learning a system and trying again is remarkably persistent.