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Wordplay

Exhilirating, if a little pointless. Like crossword puzzles themselves

By PETER KEOUGH | June 21, 2006

3.0 Stars

WORLD OF WORD NERDS: Wordplay

In Patrick Creadon’s sly and agreeable documentary, the world of word nerds expands from the driven schoolchildren competing in the national spelling bee of Spellbound (2002) and the savant-like anagrammists scrambling for the Scrabble championship in Word Wars (2004) to ordinary folks like Bill Clinton, Mike Mussina, Jon Stewart, and myself. In other words, fans of Will Shortz and the New York Times crossword puzzle. I don’t know what those not addicted might get out of these celebrity insights into this obsession, but I found them fascinating. Creadon also imposes on his debut feature a symmetry and form not unlike the puzzles themselves (reflected visually in the down-and-across gridlike cutting). Interwoven with the talking heads are two narrative lines: puzzler Merl Reagle constructs one crossword (on the theme of “wordplay”) while competitors in Shortz’s 28th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament vie to deconstruct others. Exhilarating, if pointless, like puzzling itself.

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