Not many contain “snooker”
The Sphere, Saturday 11 April 1925
I suspect that the cross-word puzzle craze now, one hopes, nearly at the end of its tether—must have had a deadly effect on the sale of novels. So far as the booksellers are concerned, I hope they have made it up by their trade in dictionaries and kindred books of reference. It is sad here to relate that the most useful dictionaries, judging by some of the words used, are those with an American origin. Few English dictionaries, I judge, contain such a word as “snooper,” for example. Not many contain “snooker.” Both these words appeared in a recent cross-word puzzle. I am amazed, by the way, to find what a lot of words are in Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary that are not in the Oxford Dictionary. When it is completed—and it is on other grounds by far the best dictionary in the English-speaking world—the Oxford will have to publish a supplemental volume of up-to-date slang, English and American. C. K. S.