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@optonline.net Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
-- rec-arts-movies-reviews@robomod.net mailing list http://www.robomod.net/mailman/listinfo/rec-arts-movies-reviews
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews