Unlike several family members, I no longer do the New York Times crossword puzzle on a regular basis. But I’ve been an intermittent member of the cruciverbalist cult, so Wordplay was a must-see. (Albeit on DVD.) And it is a great movie.
Will Shortz is the focal point of the film, since his life-long focus on puzzles is why the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament started in 1978. The ACPT gives the movie a framework, as we meet participants, constructors, and follow the 2005 contest. This documentary is structured much like Spellbound. I wonder if there is a direct connection, or that’s just an obvious device. I don’t think the skills of puzzling and spelling necessarily align (although the latter is required for the former), but there is certainly an obsessive overlap.
Of the two films, I preferred Wordplay. It follows adults instead of children, and the graphic display of crossword construction was remarkable. The visuals were not fancy, but illustrative and entertaining. Merl Reagle, a long-time constructor, makes an engaging counterpoint to Shortz, too. If this were an Oscar-type film, he’d be a Best Supporting Actor. Metacritic only has a 73, which is probably 10 points too low.
Back in 1992 (!), I re-published a cryptic crossword puzzle book for The Atlantic Monthly. The title? The Atlantic Monthly Puzzler Book, Volume One. (Original, I know.) It was 100 puzzles, 98 of which appeared in the magazine from 1977 to 1986.
During the process, I spoke with a few of the people profiled here, including Will Shortz. At that time, Shortz was the editor of Games magazine, and we wanted a blurb for the cover (and possibly for the ads). The puzzle community — as the film shows — knows each other, so Shortz was happy to endorse the magnificent work of Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, collected in this book. His blurb:
The world of puzzles has few pleasures as great as solving a particularly devious Cox and Rathvon cryptic crossword.
Will Shortz, editor of Games
You should know that cryptic crosswords make the daily NYT puzzle look like a word jumble for second graders. These things are b-r-u-t-a-l. I was pleased if I could complete more than a single clue.
Anyway, I spoke to Shortz briefly, and spent a lot of time on the phone working out a barter arrangement with Stan Newman, who also appears in Wordplay. We never met, but we did trade ads. He got to promote some of his Random House puzzle books in The Atlantic Monthly (when it was still monthly), and we got to promote our Puzzler Book in some of his publications.
The whole project was probably only a bit better than break-even. Still, I learned buckets about bringing together the various threads of a project.
I hope Emily and Henry have continued on to tremendous success. I never met them, since they worked remotely, but they were a delight to work with. I see that Random House (through Stan Newman?) did publish a later collection of 45 puzzles, at least. The Atlantic, unfortunately, dropped The Puzzler from the print magazine after the February 2006 edition. It’s still available online for subscribers only.
