Yesterday I saw Wordplay, the new documentary about crossword puzzles and the people who love them, featuring Will Shortz, New York Times crossword puzzle editor, and including appearances by Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton and others. (The trailer is on the website.) Crossword nut that I am, I’d been waiting for this to open. Happily, I enjoyed it as much as I’d hoped.

Even though this is opening weekend, the theater was nearly empty – there were 10, maybe 12 people in the audience. Perhaps there’d been more people at the premiere the night before. The small number was actually great, because the director, one of the producers, and one of the cast members (Ellen Ripstein) were there to take questions after the movie was over. I asked how they got Bill Clinton to be in the movie – it turns out that on a trip to Stanford, they met someone who knows him, and he conveyed to Clinton their desire for him to appear in the movie. By the time they made their formal request to his office, he’d decided to do it.

The heart of the movie, though, isn’t the famous people, but the people who attend the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut. There’s Ellen Ripstein, the “Susan Lucci of crosswords”; Tyler Hinman, 21-year-old two-time tournament winner; Jon Delfin, pianist and multiple tournament winner (we get to see him performing as an accompanist at theater auditions); Trip Payne, crossword constructor and multiple winner; and others.

I was most interested to learn that Trip Payne is gay. I was familiar with his name – he occasionally has crosswords published in the Times, and he appears in Marc Romano’s 2005 book, Crossworld. The movie was the first time I’d ever seen him, though. It was odd – I was looking at him on the screen, and there was something about him that ever so slightly triggered my gaydar. So I looked at his finger – no wedding ring. Then I noticed there was a little bit of highlighting in his hair. In the next scene, we see him playing pinball with another guy. Then Trip addresses him as “dear.” Dingdingding. Then we hear that he’s Trip’s partner and that they’ve been together for a few years. They smooch. It’s cute.

I was surprised to learn that he was gay. Then I was surprised that I was surprised. The thing is, even as a gay man, I’m used to hearing about gay people in a gay-related context: gay rights, gay bars, the theater. I usually learn someone is gay before I know anything else about them. So it was cool to learn about someone being gay in the context of crossword-puzzle enthusiasm, of all things. It’s like when I was younger and I used to think pessimistically that there was nobody else like me. Then suddenly there was.

The first audience member to speak after the movie told the director that he hates crosswords even though his girlfriend and his ex-wife were both crossword fans. But he said he loved the movie, because he used to be a prizefighter and he felt that the movie captured the same sense of excitement and competition that he used to experience in the ring. It was a great comment – the director loved it.

Anyway, Wordplay is highly entertaining. I may have to attend the tournament next year. But I have a feeling attendance is going to be WAY up after this movie.