Stephen Fry celebrates, examines, and plays word games and explains why they're important. Is English an innately playful language? Are word games good for you? Do we divide into number and word players (Sudoku and Sudon't-ku?) Contributors include linguists, comedians, puzzle-creators, and psychologists, with archive material from comedy shows and others. There is an interview with a puzzlemaster, Chris Maslanka, and a look at why English, with its huge vocabulary and wealth of synonyms, lends itself so readily to word games. Could Scrabble have been invented in any other language? How did a growing fashion for ever more cryptic crosswords help to defeat Hitler? The answers will surprise and delight the listener.