Crossword puzzle fans get their own movie

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Shruti

@shruti

Alumni

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Posted: 19 years ago

Crossword puzzle fans get their own movie

Every Sunday morning, a nice, middle-aged man with a soothing voice drives listeners of a radio program heard across the United States to wonder if they are nuts or just stupid. He is Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times, a puzzle fanatic since about the age of 9, and the holder of the only known Ph.D. in enigmalogy (the study of puzzles). He is also "Puzzle Master" of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, in which he and host Liane Hansen conduct deviously clever word games with listeners.

Now the 53-year-old Shortz, one of a select few to make a living out of concocting crossword puzzles and word games, is about to become a movie star thanks to a new documentary called "Wordplay," which is built around him and a few others who have made crossword puzzle solving their life's work. The film, which opens nationally on Friday, centers on Shortz and a tense little yearly contest he created, called the American Crossword Puzzle tournament.

On NPR, Shortz drives his listeners to distraction with old-fashioned word games because even he has not figured out how to do a radio crossword.Typically he will ask something like: "Think of a phrase of the form blank and blank. The initials of the two words in the blanks are R and F. Change the first letter of the second word from an F to a V, and the two new words will be synonyms."