Wordplay (2006)

That was an excellent one.

Sadly Over-hyped

Nice effects though.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

My seventy-six-year-old grandmother has two rituals she's carried with her every day for the past twentysomething years - first thing in the morning, upon walking outside in the bitter cold or the scorching Chicago humidity to get her newspaper, she'll always do the crossword puzzle and she'll always watch the new episode of Jeopardy! in the afternoon. I remember observing her as a young child, staying overnight at her house, wondering how she could fill in the blanks to a complex puzzle so quickly or respond so confidently to nearly every question on the gameshow. To this day, her energy levels and intelligence far surpass mine and I'd be damned if she wasn't one of the wisest people I've come to know.According to Will Shortz, the editor of the crossword puzzles found in The New York Times, she would fall into one of two categories of people who are good at crossword puzzles. Those two kinds of people are musicians and math-minded people, otherwise known as those who excel at actuary sciences, accounting, or problem solving of any kind. These kinds of people are said to process a great deal of coded information in their field, allowing them to have more of an aptitude at trying to decode your average crossword puzzle found in your local newspaper.Wordplay is a documentary about the crossword puzzle, a national passtime of sorts that compliments Sunday morning like a piping hot coffee or a freshly baked doughnut. Throughout the film, we observe a national crossword competition, where dozens of people from around the world gather to solve a series of crossword puzzles in record time, whilst documentarian Patrick Creadon profiles a select few individuals from the competition to give us insight on the difficult nature of crossword puzzle solving and creating.One of the contestants in the the national competition is Trip Payne, a puzzlemaker who has crafted an upwards of 4,000 unique crossword puzzles and frequently competes on a national scale. Armed with the support of his husband and his consistent desire to outdo his previous performance, Payne makes his way through the national competition in order to win the title of the crossword champion.Another individual Creadon profiles is Merl Reagle, a crossword puzzle maker who shares his insights on how to make a fun and challenging puzzle. Reagle, similar to Shortz, always starts with a core idea, for example, "Word Play," where all the subsequent words, be them up, down, or across, will have the word "word" or "play" embedded somewhere in them but not deal directly with either of those words. Reagle sits as his dining-room table for hours, crafting a puzzle, sometimes surprising himself with how many words he knows. These scenes are the most intimate and revealing, mostly because we see how something we either take for granted or don't pay much thought to is structured. Just the thought of trying to create a crossword puzzle, let alone solve one, for me, makes me nauseous; I struggled to make word searches in grade school.Creadon also holds interviews with people like Jon Stewart, a lover - perhaps connoisseur - of Shortz's crossword puzzles and Bill Clinton, all of whom enjoy challenging themselves and testing their verbosity with The New York Times puzzle. A terrific scene comes about halfway through the documentary, where we see Stewart, Clinton, and other celebrities try to solve one of Shortz's crossword puzzles in record time. "I'm so confident in myself," Stewart claims, "I'm going to do it in gluestick." Wordplay, much like toying around with the English language, is a lot of fun. The heart of the documentary is in the characters it profiles, specifically people like Payne and Reagle, who craft these complex crossword puzzles. When the documentary takes the last twenty-five minutes to profile the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the spark of charisma in the film greatly simmers. The people Creadon focuses on are so filled with insight and ideas that it almost seems criminal to shift focus late in the game when we have a wealth of ideas and language trickery being detailed right before us.Directed by: Patrick Creadon.

Wordplay (2006) *** (out of 4) Interesting documentary that takes a look at the people who make and work on crossword puzzles with the main focus being on the 28th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. This is the part where I say I'm horrible at doing crossword puzzles so I was extremely fascinated at the people in the spotlight here because to me these people are pretty incredible. For example, doing the tournament there's one puzzle with over a hundred and thirty-five words yet a few of the players get in done in around seven minutes. A lot of the focus of the film is also on Will Shortz, the New York Times editor of their crossword puzzles. He too talks about how he got involved with the puzzles and eventually ended up majoring in them during college. When it comes to the real-life people solving these things we get interviews with people like Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart, NY Yankees' pitcher Mike Mussina and even members of the Indigo Girls. The best part of the film are the final twenty-minutes when we get to the tournament and see what the rules are, how they play and one members heartbreak after reaching the final. I won't spoil things but a man named Al will certainly capture your heart. If I think there's one weakness to the film is that it never really gave me the desire to start playing the games myself. While I was fascinated by the subject I can't say the movie ever got me excited or interesting enough to start giving them a try myself.

Bristling with intellectual playfulness, this worthy homage to one of America's favorite systematic stumpers, the daily New York Times' crossword puzzle, first starts out as a witty documentary on the history of this fixation but eventually evolves into so much more. Beginning with an analysis and introduction into the rarely discussed guilty pleasure, Wordplay evolves it's purpose as the film moves along, initiating the viewer into the lives of these often brilliant and eccentric people who revolve around the cerebral workout NY Times puzzle editor Will Shortz helped cultivate, which climaxes yearly with it's championship competition. Obviously this tiny niche of a documentary may fall flat with people who are television junkies, anti-intellectual or the opposite of inquisitive, as the introduction into this bizarre but honorable subculture does tend to alienate with the history and preparation of these puzzles which can be all too apathetic to your average viewer. Just let the film's character's set root however, and an entirely human element comes into the staunch equation, much like the words that render themselves visible only when filling in others around it for these dictionary junkies. With the chronicling of several potential crossword champs culminating in last year's competition, Wordplay has taken something intrinsically elitist and rendered it universal with the frenzied competition leaving viewers in suspense until the final pencil is dropped, much like the recent spelling bee fad, but to me even more impressive given the insane amount of knowledge needed to seriously compete. Celebreties from all walks of life also help diversify, demystify, and clarify why this underrated tradition will continue to be the true coffee for the soul.

You would never imagine that the evolution and story behind the New York Times crossword puzzle and the people who both create them and ferociously try to solve them, would be so darn interesting. This movie proves that a good theme, a sincere effort and some interesting, quirky characters can make even the most remote of subjects, a fascinating, moving documentary. Watching Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton and other famous people work at the crossword somehow humanizes them in a way that I have honestly never seen before. Everyone who attacks the puzzle is now on the same page, and the movie somehow made me feel a lot better about the human race. If there is anything that unites us all, it is the need to solve something - to go through the process of cracking it and to ultimately own it. By watching this movie, you almost have the same amount of respect for the people who are simply the best in the country at this particular thing, as you do for the Stewarts and the Clintons of this world.