Director:
Patrick Creadon
Featuring:
Will Shortz
Ken Burns
Bill Clinton
Bob Doyle
Jon Stewart
Mike Mussina
The Weinstein Co. and IFC Films present Wordplay. Written by Creadon and Christine O’Malley. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated PG (for some language and mild thematic elements). Available on DVD: November 7, 2006. MSRP: $24.95.
As we grow old it is recommended that we try to keep our brains active. So we read newspapers to get our daily digest of news and information — without the barrage of I-think-I-know-it-all news anchors and commentary as seen on the twenty-four-seven cable networks — and fictional and non-fictional works to expand our minds. But flipping past the Main section and City and State sections there’s Arts and Leisure. Surprisingly, while this section has the TV listings, birthdates of famous celebs and stories of entertainment events in your local or nearby metropolis, it also contains one of the best ways to exercise the brain: the crossword puzzle.
Now, for many, there is only one “true” crossword puzzle. It can be found in The New York Times each day. I’ll be honest, I’ve never tried to tackle such a puzzle, instead sticking to those found in TV magazines and West Texas newspapers. With Wordplay, I may just have to grab a pencil and fill in the squares.
This documentary isn’t only about how The Times puzzle has become a cultural phenomenon; it’s about those who love to solve puzzles. Almost like an addiction. Like interview subject Jon Stewart admits, when he stays in a hotel he’ll work the USA Today but he doesn’t feel good about it.
The doc opens on the 28th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut. The emcee for the event is Will Shortz, originator of the three day tournament as well as editor to the NYT crossword puzzles. To conceive the man as being bookish could be a misnomer. Stewart jokingly jests that Will Shortz should be a man that stands 13 to 14 inches tall, yet comes across as someone who could best him in a joust. A lover of puzzles since he was a kid, Will Shortz attended college with no idea of the degree he wanted to pursue. He essentially created his own degree plan in which the breadth of his classes centered on puzzles. So in essence, a hobby morphed into a career by way of a college degree. A degree in Enigmatology.
It’s one thing to be a puzzlesolver, it’s another thing entirely to be a creator of puzzles. That’s where Merl Reagle’s comments are warranted. He’s been constructing crossword puzzles for some thirty-plus years. As he travails the U S of A he has a number of flip-top notebooks with him. The importance? Any time Merl has an idea for a crossword clue, it’s just a flip top and a pen stroke away.
Wordplay is director Patrick Creadon’s visual research paper. Meaning, at the start of his project, the focus was Will Shortz. But like most documentaries everything changes. Ideas are discovered, stories from other participants help to create something new entirely.
By having the movie centered on the Crossword Puzzle Tournament, it allows for individual contestants to be brought to our attention. The three finalists (Tyler Hinman, Trip Payne and Al Sanders) and others open up on why they enjoy solving puzzles. Each has a different occupation — most notably Hinman is a twenty-year-old college student — but so far as I know, none of them competed in spelling bees as a kid.
Bees only get a cursory mention, because this is a crossword puzzle movie after all. The reference to spelling bees is in attempts to figure out those individuals best suited to fill in blank squares that go left-to-right and up-and-down. Good spelling skills and a good knowledge of words come in handy when writing an answer correctly, but fail when crosswords require an encyclopedia mind. Well, to some degree. One of the top two professions best suited to solve crossword puzzles is not much of a surprise. The other may make you scratch your head with a number two pencil.
Puzzle champions are well-informed individuals, intelligent, and are capable of processing information at a dizzying speed. Some may say of what they do is a meaningless hobby. Words like obsessive and eccentric are labels that could characterize them. Though, such labels could be used to describe any athletic pursuit, both sweat free and sweat-related.
Working with his wife and friends, Creadon takes a simple idea and makes it more interactive with graphics and overlapping. During the tournament, graphics show us crossword grids with problem areas. As a viewer you may be compelled to try to solve the questions on your own.
The interview segments with more recognized faces and celebrities is a lighter touch. Jon Stewart is a laugh-a-minute with an office, a desk, a pen, and a puzzle. When Yankees ace pitcher Mike Mussina speaks of trying to solve a Merl Reagle puzzle, he compares the clues and puzzle design to facing Barry Bonds in a batter-versus-pitcher duel. Former President Bill Clinton, Bob Doyle and fellow documentarian Ken Burns, among others, also weigh in on what it’s like to tackle The New York Times crossword.
For the finale, the final championship round, the diabolical puzzlemaster that is Will Shortz throws a curve — much to the delight to Mussina I bet — in how the tournament is decided. All three finalists must stand onstage in front of big crossword puzzles so that all the spectators (press, fans and fellow contestants) can watch. If that wasn’t daunting enough, they wear headphones that drown out the sounds from the crowd with music. There is a bit of nail-biting suspense as the finalists agonize over certain clues, get stumped for a bit, and misspell (but later go back and correct) answers.
Who wins? That’s for you to discover. I will admit this much: Wordplay is braniac fun and a documentary that appeals to those who love to solve all kinds of puzzles. It even appeals to those who haven’t quite progressed to The New York Times crossword puzzles. That’s a different beast altogether.
THE VIDEO
(Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen)
Shooting on the fly like most documentaries director Patrick Creadon retains a good image. A movie like Wordplay doesn’t try to wow you with amazing visuals. Just a camera and a microphone, Creadon and crew lucked into interviews. The interviews themselves, some not all, are dimly lit, but that has to do with using natural light instead of the filmmakers bringing some fill lights to the interview sessions.
THE AUDIO
(English — Dolby Digital 5.1)
Clean and sharp, the DD 5.1 audio highlights the talky, puzzle-solving documentary. Most of the background music is understated, but those who love college or progressive rock will like hearing selections from Cake and They Might Be Giants. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are also available.
SPECIAL FEATURES
This darling from Sundance 2005 comes to home video with a bevy of extras. It may seem strange having a commentary track to go along with a documentary. But when a doc like Creadon’s lacks narration, the listener gets to hear other stories and crossword insight not experienced in the feature film. Joining Creadon is Will Shortz and Merl Regale. All three have a nice rapport with each other. Stories of how interviews were obtained proliferate the commentary. Also worth noting is the camera shake during the Jon Stewart interview. This is Creadon’s fault as he had to fight hard from laughing.
Miffed that there wasn’t much on the creation of crossword puzzles, try 5 Unforgettable Puzzles from the Pages of The New York Times. With the ability to play all featurettes in succession, you will be presented with five puzzles that were published in the newspaper that are clever for their own good. The best bets are “19 Black Squares” and “Laboratory Maze”. As a bonus to us, the puzzles discussed are included in a min-booklet inside the keep case that houses the disc. They can also be printed off the disc when inserted into a DVD-ROM drive.
Wordplay goes to Sundance is a three part, 21-minute feature that chronicles the doc’s stellar showing at the festival of festivals. It covers the movie’s world premiere, the subsequent Q & A session with Creadon, the finalists, and the puzzlemaster (Shortz) and creator (Reagle). The last part is a bit of fun and games with Will Shortz entertaining a Park City, Utah, restaurant with an impromptu word game puzzle.
From this there is an abundant of scenes that were left on the cutting room floor: seven deleted scenes of Will Shortz (the letter he reads for the first deleted scene is amusing); six more deleted scenes, most of these involve crossword-puzzle notables (notable after having seen the documentary, of course); and three deleted scenes from Stamford (one of which will make it abundantly clear that Brad Pitt was not in Sneakers).
In addition to the deleted scenes is an Interview Gallery with snippets of interviews conducted with the likes of the Indigo Girls, Ken Burns, Jon Stewart, Mike Mussina, former President Bill Clinton and his then arch rival to the White House former U.S. Senator Bob Dole.
“”¦And the Winner is”¦” (3:33) is a short feature that allows us to see the final round of the 2006 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I’ll give you this much, only one of the three 2005 finalists makes it to the last puzzle this year.
Completing the extras is a 12-minute short film and a music video. Waiting for The New York Times has interviewer/director Patricia Erens visiting a small-town Michigan pharmacy asking customers why they like the Sunday edition of The Times. The music video is “Every Word” by Gary Louris. It is the song that plays over the final credits.
THE INSIDE PULSE
With the recent rise in the popularity of spelling bees (see documentary Spellbound, or films Bee Season and Akeelah and the Bee) it was only a matter of time before Hollywood would turn its attention to other brainteasers. With Wordplay, The New York Times crossword puzzle is the guest of honor. It is a fun little documentary that celebrates what it means to create, edit and complete the esteemed crossword puzzle. A nice set of extras (how can you go wrong with five free crossword puzzles, let alone an audio commentary and other featurettes?) complement one of the top thirty grossing documentaries of all-time. This DVD is worth a look.
