One usually pictures crossword solvers as solitary, studious, anti-social types, bespectacled bards who find bliss only in arriving at the right word in the right place.
Not Will Shortz.
As editor of what aficionados consider the ne plus ultra of the craft, The New York Times crossword puzzle, Shortz is the gregarious ambassador of puzzledom, the man who almost single-handedly is elevating puzzles to the entertainment mainstream.
"He's the Errol Flynn of crossword puzzles," Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show and a committed puzzle solver, says of Shortz in Wordplay, a documentary about crosswords that features Shortz as its central character alongside passionate puzzlers like Bill Clinton, the Indigo Girls and former Orioles pitcher Mike Mussina (now with the Yankees).
The high point of the film, which opened in Baltimore on Friday, is the culmination of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held annually in the spring in a hotel in Stamford, Conn. Shortz has been its host since founding the event in 1978.
At a time when spelling bees are making it onto prime time television -- as is every other human contest imaginable, from singing to eating insects to racing across the planet -- it seems inevitable that crossword puzzles, with their intense, brain-busting challenges, should end up with similar exposure.
In an interview, Shortz, trim, neat and mustachoied, self-effacingly said the attention that Wordplay has received is a bit of a surprise.
"From my standpoint, I didn't think the movie would turn out as well as it has," he said. "I thought it might be something they could sell to PBS or to a late-night cable channel."
Instead, Wordplay, directed by veteran cameraman Patrick Creadon, was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It was the only American documentary to get snapped up for a distribution deal, under which it is unspooling on screens around the country.
"That's very cool," said Shortz, who is far from the ponderous, pontificating wordsmith one might imagine. "It's an honor, it's flattering, and it's an experience I've never had before. I'm very pleased this subject will reach a lot of people who've never thought much about crosswords before."
