MOSCOW, October 11 (RIA Novosti) - It took Viktor Mayorov from Sergiyev Posad seven years to write a huge crossword puzzle, which he presented today. He put a thick roll on the ground on Druzhnaya street, pressed a notebook against its edge and began unwinding his masterpiece. This lasted for 30 minutes, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports.
The crossword is 45 m 90 cm long and 19 cm wide. It contains 27,002 words (12,422 across and 14,580 down). It is made of 600 exercise books.
Viktor Mayorov's daughter Tatiana said that her father took a great interest in solving crossword puzzles after his wife's death and soon began composing them himself. "He used to get up at six a.m., have some tea and start drawing his squares and reading dictionaries," she said. Granddaughter Masha helped Viktor paint the squares.
The surname of the valet from Chekhov's story "The Wall" is among the questions.
According to the author, it will take him 12 days to rewrite his puzzle making empty squares with numbers in order to let people solve it.
