Movie Friday...kinda late

Warning - Severe nerd alert. This post may contain more than the usual amount of nerdiness you have come to expect from underachieversanonymous.blogspot.com. Keep reading with caution.




I had both heard and read about Wordplay, but I did not intend to see it because it seemed even more nerdy than I am. A documentary about crossword puzzles? In an unexpected twist of fate, the film happened to be playing on British Airways' inflight Documentary channel.

Wordplay documents the phenomenon of crossword puzzles and the people who love them. The king of said group is New York Times crossword puzzle editor and useless information guru Will Shortz. (I am not a huge crossword puzzle fan, but I am a regular NPR listener and Will Shortz does a puzzle segment every Sunday morning on the program Weekend Edition which I enjoy very much.) Shortz created the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a crossword Olympics so to speak, over 25 years ago. It takes place yearly in Stamford, Connecticut and this film documents one of these contests.

I found it very interesting to see the cross section of people that enjoyed crossword puzzles. Young, old, male, female, straight, gay, famous, unfamous. Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton make notable appearances in the film and the film has a fun and playful vibe to it. The graphics and music are also quite clever and they help build up to a surprisingly suspenseful ending to the film. As winter is coming, this may be the perfect film to watch on a cold or cloudy day when you don't want to leave the house. I was pleasantly surprised by it and I bet you will be too.

Cuidate.