Wordplay (2006)
The Weinstein Company

Description

Witness the inner workings of Will Shortz, NY Times Editor and NPR Puzzle Master, and his brilliant, entertaining and often hilarious contributors as well as surprising celebrity fans. Wordplay takes us through the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament where almost five hundred competitors battled it out for the title "Crossword Champ" and showed their true colors along the way.

Tags

Crossword puzzle

Collected reviews and ratings

9.0 DVD Verdict | James A. Stewart

Those of you who expect to see Jack Bauer shooting someone every time you see a split screen might be disappointed with Wordplay; no one even snaps a pencil in frustration. There's a hint of tension in the final reel, but Wordplay is a low-key look at mild-mannered people with a passion for puzzles.
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8.8 TV Guide | Ken Fox

Using a slew of interesting interviews and a brilliant visual device, filmmaker Patrick Creadon treats the ordinarily solitary pursuit of "crossword-puzzling" as a kind of spectator sport; his documentary on the subject is nearly as exciting as Hoop Dreams.
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8.0 Time | Richard Corliss

... this film is as smart and funny as its topic and its stars.
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8.0 Washington Post | Ann Hornaday

Just when you think the subjects of "Wordplay" present ideal fodder for the next Christopher Guest mockumentary, Creadon goes deeper to show them not as oddballs but as people for whom puzzling is as much about reaching out as knowing the answer -- it becomes endearingly clear that the blanks they're filling aren't just on the page.
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8.0 DVD Talk | Phil Bacharach

Wordplay is a thoroughly irresistible celebration of The New York Times crossword puzzle. This is charming in the best sense of the word, taking a subject that smacks of NPR-styled preciousness and making it fun and curiously exuberant.
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8.0 Boxoffice Magazine | Bridget Byrne

This entertaining documentary about the people who dream up the across and down clues of the New York Times crossword puzzle and the fanatics who struggle to solve them, both privately and at tournaments, is bright, concise and to the point.
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8.0 Amazon user reviews

Crossworders-quel subculture! I had no idea that this world was out there, this competitive bunch of crossworders, but I must say that I am indeed a better person for now knowing!
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7.5 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

The film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity.
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7.5 Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

I thought I'd be bored stiff watching a bunch of word geeks gather in Stamford, Connecticut, for the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Boy, was I wrong. There's more palm-sweating suspense in one minute of this baby than in all of The Omen.
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7.0 New York Times | Phillip Lopate

Those of us addicted to doing the crossword puzzles in this newspaper should find the spectacle of similar fetishists compulsively watchable. Nonaddicts may need more convincing.
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7.0 Variety | Justin Chang

Punsters, linguists and crossword puzzle fanatics everywhere couldn't ask for a more bracing tribute than helmer Patrick Creadon's buoyant and exhilaratingly brainy docu "Wordplay."
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5.8 Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's a fact you can pack in your _ _ _ _ (small ornamental case): Because they're sedentary adults who work in stolid silence as they chase their letters, crossword puzzle tournament contestants don't generate nearly the same dramatic excitement as young spelling bee hopefuls who burst into tears when they mess up.
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