Some of my favourite American movies have been documentaries. A few years ago there was the film ‘Spellbound’ about the 1999 National Spelling Bee. The film featured eight very different teenagers competing to win the national spelling competition. The film was quirky, touching, and suspenseful. Now I have another favourite, Patrick Creadon’s film, ‘Wordplay’. With ‘Wordplay’, we move from the world of spelling champions across to the world of crossword champions.

‘Wordplay’ has a charming, winning formula. The film boosts that over 50 million people do a crossword every week. ‘Wordplay’ is basically everything one wants to know about crosswords and was afraid to ask!

Creadon interviews in depth crossword expert, New York Times puzzle editor, Will Shortz and some of the main, and often hilarious, puzzle contributors. We learn about how they go about creating their different puzzles, and the different puzzle styles they create.

Creadon goes on to interview many celebrities who are passionate about their crosswords including Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, a very funny Jon Stewart, and the Indigo Girls. They each reveal their own particular process of tackling crosswords.

The hub of the film is the coverage of the 28th annual crossword championship, the world’s largest championship of its kind, held at the Marriott hotel in Stanford, Connecticut. Once a year, on a wintery weekend, roughly 500 puzzlers from all around the world and all walks of life, gather to compete.

Creadon captures the anticipation and excitement as participants gather, his camera focuses on the stressed puzzlers as they work away in their small booths, and before long the film focuses on the players who will come to the fore, at the business end. Included amongst them are a piano player, an editor, a professional puzzle maker, and a computer engineer, each with distinctive personalities.

The defining quality of ‘Wordplay’ was its warmth, as it captured some 500 people gathering together with goodwill in a hotel over a weekend and sharing their love of one of life’s simple pleasures, the good old crossword.