’m a Times puzzle fan,” says comedian Jon Stewart. “When I’m in a hotel or something, I’ll do a USA Today—but I don’t feel good about myself.”



To a person as yet uninitiated to the world of crossword puzzle aficionados and their annual competition, such a distinction has no meaning: Few of us even look at crossword puzzles these days, much less try to do them on the clock. But there’s a world where Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, is king, and doing an average Monday puzzle in anything above five minutes flat is utterly pedestrian.

The players in this emulous game of puzzling are many. There are the puzzle constructers, the editors, and the consultants. Then there are causal junkies like Stewart, former President Bill Clinton, and New York Yankees hurler Mike Mussina. And finally, of course, there are the professionals—those who compete in the yearly competition at Stamford, solving even the most arduous of crosswords (featuring words like “Zolaesque”) in under 15 minutes. And what do all of these peoples of the puzzle world have in common? For all of them, it’s the Times puzzle, or nothing.

Wordplay, a documentary that reveals this hidden world of alphabetical wizardry to those us who prefer reading the paper to writing in it, is a surprisingly colorful film. Certainly, it features plenty of historical background—of the Times puzzle itself and of its current editor, Shortz. But more than that, it’s a wholly cohesive story of the disparate individuals who rigorously complete the puzzle daily, the diverse characters united by this ritualistic pursuit. Where many documentaries, even good ones like the recently released An Inconvenient Truth, tend to get too talky, Wordplay is equal parts conversation and concentration. There’s plenty of narration and many exacting interviews with past and hopeful competition champions; these are the moments when the puzzle-doers talk to the audience, discussing basics of the trade and their individual philosophies. But even as the dialogue allows us the adequate background to absorb the gravity of what we see, there are those other moments sprinkled in— those times when we’re placed unconsciously in the shoes of the puzzle champions, focusing on the common task at hand..


In these quiet, seemingly real-time moments of concentration, we are shown the same clue as the competitors and given the chance to solve it as they attempt to. Such instances are not forced— and thankfully not, else the film should feel like a nightmarish SAT prep-course—but occur as part of the film’s ongoing dialogue, just a quick way to try out the puzzles we’re being told so much about. Oddly, by the film’s end, after witnessing the deciphering of countless (seemingly) impossible puzzles, we get the feeling of having done one ourselves, having unlocked some technique or strategy to combat the mystery of this mind-bending recreational pursuit.

Many recent popular documentaries have possessed that unmistakable political air, the left’s cinematic crusade to counter the more mainstream proselytization of the right. Though Wordplay is hardly a political film, it’s easy to perceive its repetitive hail and homage to the Times as part of some systematic effort to reassert the paper’s greatness in the face of recent controversies. Still, it’s simply a fact that its puzzle is the gold standard, due largely to Shortz’s insistence that it remains perceptive to current events in all spheres of society. Though it’s completely beside any point the movie may attempt to make, some viewers will easily find a liberal slant (prominently portrayed among the celebrity crossword addicts is Daniel Okrent, the first public editor of the Times, appointed in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair ordeal), but, alas, they’d probably as soon find that in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Some of us write poetry, some intricately chart planetary movement. No matter what our fixations, there infallibly remains an air of exclusion when exploring peregrine obsessions. With a soft, step-by step narrative, Wordplay makes these eccentrics, who spend up to 12 hours a day creating or solving crossword puzzles, seem not weird at all. Like the best documentaries, it introduces outsiders to a world worth exploring, informs and offers a taste, while shrewdly eschewing indoctrination. After all, it features a puzzle which can be adequately solved by an answer of either Clinton or Bob Dole. Now, couldn’t we all benefit from learning how such an extraordinary thing could be?

Wordplay is currently playing in limited release.