I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Wordplay as it makes the festival rounds, and now finally we get a sneak peek via the official trailer, which has arrived online over at Yahoo!. It looks to be a fascinating and humourous documentary about the New York Times crossword puzzle and its editor Will Shortz, as well as the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (yes, there is a tournament). The movie examines the process of creating a crossword puzzle, the popularity of crosswords, and their significance in pop culture, although the main story seems to center on the tournament itself. Just looking at some of the photos from the film, there look to be some pretty wacky characters competing in tense matches with one another. Wordplay definitely seems very reminiscent of the 2004 Scrabble documentary Word Wars, which if you haven’t seen, comes highly recommended. How Jon Stewart managed to become the poster boy for this movie however, remains anyone’s guess. All I know is I can’t wait for the inevitable Sudoku documentary to follow! Wordplay will play at Hot Docs in Toronto this month, and opens in select theatres on June 16th.