Review: Wordplay (2006)

WORDPLAY
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament
and its top competitors are profiled in a new
documentary by experienced cinematographer but
first-time director Patrick Creadon. We get
introduced to the people who build the puzzles and
the people who compete to be the fastest solvers,
then we see the competition. The film falters
most in showing us celebrities who claim to be
puzzle fans but who are not really connected to
the competition. Testimonials and weak comic
relief from Jon Stewart was not necessary.
Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

There seems to be no end to films about competition as long as
the competition is obviously. Lately we have been getting a few
films about more intellectual sorts of contests. SPELLBOUND, BEE
SEASON, AKEELAH AND THE BEE, and the short SPELLING BEE were
released within the space of a few months of each other, all
involving spelling bees. Those contests may now have been over-
exposed. WORDPLAY is a delightful change from the spelling bee
films just as both kinds of films are a delightful change from
sports films. (I would not mind seeing a documentary about a
mathematics Olympiad, myself.) But two recent documentaries deal
with vocabulary competitions. They are WORD WARS and WORDPLAY.
WORD WARS from 2004 dealt with an international Scrabble
competition. WORDPLAY is this year's documentary about an
international crossword puzzle competition. The challenge is to
make a film that is visually intriguing. It is remarkable that we
have a documentary about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament
and even more so that such a film can be made visually
interesting and even suspenseful. The American Crossword Puzzle
Tournament has been held for twenty-eight years every March at
the Stamford (Connecticut) Marriott. In 2005, documentary
filmmaker Patrick Creadon covered the competition.

Now, how exciting can it be to watch somebody fill letters into
little squares? Well, first get out of your head that crossword
puzzle solving is a slow sport. Early in the film we see
somebody work a "New York Times" crossword puzzle in something
like three or four minutes. To me this is like building a
highway in an afternoon. When I first heard that there were
people who could do the puzzle in a few minutes I thought I had
heard wrong. To me it is surprising that such a thing as a
crossword puzzle could even exist. It is amazing that someone
could find the words to put something like that together. We
take it for granted but it is surprising that there are enough
words in English that it can be done, even as rich as the
language is. But some people are apparently much faster with
language than I am. Competing here are people whose minds move
so quickly they are limited mostly by how fast they can write.

The film is really structured in two halves. The first half
introduces the viewer to the participants and their attitudes
toward crossword puzzles. Mixed in are celebrities also talking
about the puzzles that are their daily routine, such as people
like Bill Clinton and Ken Burns. The former was involved in an
amazing crossword puzzle verbal coup for the puzzle that ran on
the Tuesday of 1996 Presidential Election. The puzzle was to
include the winner of that day's election and the puzzle with all
the clues worked whether the seven-letter space was filled in
with "Clinton" or "BobDole." The proper answer would not be
known until election results were known the day after the puzzle
was published. It is a good thing they did not try to repeat this
trick in 2000. A little less welcome are sequences like Jon
Stewart cutely talking to himself as he fills out a puzzle. The
second half of the film shows us the actual tournament. The top
contestants use marking pens on large puzzles in front of an
audience and they earn a single numerical measure that takes into
account speed and correctness. There is a major turnaround and
heartbreak as one of the champions makes a foolish error.
Crossword puzzles almost work at a spectator sport.

The competition is hosted by Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor
of the "New York Times" whose voice I hear every Sunday morning
as I compete with my wife with the weekly National Public Radio
Weekend Edition puzzle. Unfortunately, I found that I had heard
a bit too much about the movie revealed on NPR before seeing the
film. Also we get to see Merl Reagle, who authored many
crossword puzzles that have soaked up too much of my time.
People like Shortz and Reagle have a place in this film where Jon
Stewart seemed inappropriate.

I have to admit that for me these self-proclaimed nerds are more
interesting and impressive than anything that I have ever seen in
a NFL documentary. There is a certain chill as Will Shortz tells
the assembled competitors that "this is the puzzle that is going
to rip your heart out." The film may not really show us why
these people have the compulsion, but I am still there rooting
for them. I rate WORDPLAY a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Mark R. Leeper
mleeper.DeleteThis@optonline.net
Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper