A supposedly true story tells of an elderly woman who was found dead in her bed one morning, pencil in hand and a just-finished crossword puzzle open before her.

Now, to longtime addicts like me, that’s the way to go.

Bill Clinton would presumably agree with this sentiment. So might comic Jon Stewart, documentary maker Ken Burns, and Yankee ace pitcher Mike Mussina. These four all appear in the recent film Wordplay, a movie that has delighted those addicted to these puzzles.

The former president uses a pen rather than a pencil. He’s that skilled. And he is fast as well. However, he has never faced the acid test of competing with others in the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Last year’s competition, held in Stamford Connecticut, takes center place in Wordplay. The winner then was a 20-year-old RPI student. He beat out a man who, after making a mistake that may have cost him the prize, threw down his headphones and wept.

The fellow behind this tournament, and the crossword guru at the New York Times and NPR, is Will Shortz. He admits being a “pretty good solver” himself but he is not fast enough to enter the competition he founded.

But he serves as a connoisseur of the form. In the film he says: “A great puzzle is built on an original idea.” At the Times, he receives some 60 to 75 puzzle submissions every week.

Each year 110 different “constructors,” as Shortz calls puzzle creators, make up the crosswords. It’s an art requiring both adherence to a basic structure (one-sixth black spaces, for instance) along with ingenuity.  

In addition to the puzzles, he gets a lot of letters from crossword fans. “The best part of the week for me is reading the mail,” he tells watchers of the film. To my surprise, he acknowledges writing 75 percent of the clues himself.

Doing crossword puzzles has been a weekly, often daily, ritual in my household from the beginning. My wife, Susan, and I used to work on them together but that two-person approach soon proved not challenging enough. Now we do them separately though we much enjoy conferring with one another after finishing.

It comes as no insult to my male ego that my spouse is far better at this sport than I am. In fact, I enjoy seeing her skills at work. The only part of it that sometimes pains me is when she utters a subdued cry of satisfaction at getting the answer to a clue that is still baffling me. However, even then we try to avoid hurling cross words at one another.

One of the tournament winners in the film, Ellen Ripstein, says of doing crosswords: “It’s kind of a nerdy thing.” I don’t agree with this and take it as a personal slur. The two members of my household are not nerds, unless this word indicates well-balanced older adults ready to take on the world.

My spouse and I do not cultivate the crossword habit for therapeutic reasons. We are closer to Bill Clinton’s crossword philosophy: “It’s fun.”   

However, many professionals in the field of aging recommend doing these puzzles for brain health. Paul Nussbaum, a neuropsychologist based in Pittsburgh, says: “In my opinion, provided crossword puzzles are novel and complex and not a rote and passive task to the person's brain, it is likely to result in increased brain reserve. I define that as brain health promoting!”

Frequent puzzle solving provides me with a source of endless fascination about the ways my brain works. Oftentimes, I find myself stuck, absolutely unable to find the answer to a clue. But the next time I pick up the puzzle, the answer appears obvious.

The passage of time, even a few hours, has worked the wonder of changing my mental outlook.

The same process will apply to the central motif behind the whole puzzle. When I first look at it, the puzzle strikes me as unsolvable, too difficult for the state of my knowledge. As I plunge into it, however, intelligibility gradually appears within grasp, much to my satisfaction.

This pleasure will seem minor, even effete, to the non-addict. But, to me, and I suspect to legions of fellow crossworders, it ranks among life’s best satisfactions.

I suppose it can be compared to birding. Those addicted to the latter activity often seem ready to swoon at having spotted a magenta-winged something or other, a discovery that would not elevate me anywhere close to ecstasy, but which serves the birding community as a source of rapture.

My delight in crossword breakthroughs comes against the backdrop of a slowing down in my ability to solve them. I must admit that it now takes me longer to complete puzzles than it used to. This change does not alarm me but it does require an adjustment.

However, a somewhat diminished facility offers its own prize. Achieving the solution often delivers a satisfaction greater than before.

Richard Griffin