A Letter From The Publisher, Feb. 26, 1951

The TIME News Quiz, which appears for the 27th time in this issue, came into being 16 years ago because a young Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota had the revolutionary idea that college men should “know what goes on in the world.”

Alvin C. (for Christian) Eurich, a specialist in educational psychology and a top man in testing techniques, outlined the curriculum for Minnesota’s new General College in 1933. He decided that each student should prove knowledge of the news by passing a major examination in “Contemporary Affairs.” Academic precedents were bruised when he rated the test as 20% of the student’s total credit toward graduation. Since no college had ever before placed that much emphasis on the news, there was no test in existence to satisfy the need.

And so Eurich decided to develop his own quiz. He found a collaborator in Elmo C. (for Chamberlin) Wilson, a graduate student nominated for the job by his department.The two formed a team that lasted.

Eurich and Wilson set up, revised, and tried out innumerable questions with the help of 30-odd researchers, several professors of arts and social sciences, and hundreds of submissive students. The team emerged from all this toil, sweat and tedium in May 1934 with a quiz they liked. The scholarly American Council on Education also liked it.

The testers, both inveterate TIME-readers, saw an inevitable development: they suggested that TIME, whose business is news, publish current-events tests for its readers.

The editors agreed to collaborate on a quiz for schools, but barred it from the magazine. But this first school test went over so big that the editors changed their minds. They decided to publish a tougher version, which appeared in our issue of March 11, 1935. When readers requested 18,000 extra copies, the test became a regular feature.

Nowadays more than 100,000 copies of test booklets go to more than 2,000 schools and colleges three times a year. Many instructors award prizes provided by TIME to the students who score, highest in each class. Some winners over the years: Gene Lauder Tunney (the ex-champ’s son), John de Cuevas (John D. Rockefeller’s great-grandson), Margaret Truman (see cover).

During the war, the Navy asked Eurich to direct preparation of its courses and tests. He later became a vice president of Stanford University, then came East to pull 29 scattered colleges together into the just-born State University of New York. Wilson, who couldn’t leave questions alone, became a pollster. He directed wartime surveys for OWI and SHAEF, later joined Elmo Roper as a partner in International Public Opinion Research, Inc.

Meanwhile, Eurich and Wilson have kept on writing questions for TIME-readers — often from unlikely places such as just-captured Cherbourg, a pitching destroyer, the beach at Waikiki, and airplanes flying all over the world. Usually, each drafts a complete test, then, if possible, flies to a collaboration point. From there they send the resulting questionnaire to our staff for editing and checking. Its arrival often produces a spirited give & take between the editors and the educators, ending in a test.

This week the test section contains a new feature, the

News Cross-Quiz, a crossword puzzle composed for us by Mrs. Margaret Petherbridge Farrar. No novice, she has published 66 books of crosswords since she began puzzling the public in 1920. We think we should make the Cross-Quiz a permanent part of the test. Do you agree?

Cordially yours,