.MOVIE LISTINGS | MOVIE REVIEW ARCHIVE | THEATER INFO A Sublime Puzzle Looking for meaning in the crossword community. BY JASON BLAIR WORDPLAY: Directed by Patrick Creadon. Written by Patrick Creadon and Christine O'Malley. Cinematography, Patrick Creadon. Music, Vic Fleming and Peter Golub. Featuring Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, Neal Conan, Bob Dole, Liane Hansen, Mike Mussina, Amy Ray, Emily Saliers and Jon Stewart. IFC Films, 2006. PG. 94 minutes. Will Shortz Part of the pleasure of the new film Wordplay is how it manages to make something as trivial as crossword puzzles seem profoundly important to our lives and our culture. Along the way, Wordplay doesn't condescend or proselytize. It doesn't try to convince you that crosswords will save your life, your marriage or your bank account. Instead, Wordplay does what all great documentaries do: It connects us to people or things we've overlooked and in the process shows us who we are. In the sense that it examines a fanatical, grammatical subculture, Wordplay is not unlike a Spellbound (2003) for adults. It's a small masterpiece. Although billed as a Will Shortz tribute film, Wordplay actually is much more than that. Shortz, the "Errol Flynn of crossword puzzling," is the current puzzle editor at The New York Times and the creator of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. A godlike figure to puzzlers the world over, Shortz is the natural centerpiece here. But Wordplay is about the various personalities who have gravitated to, triumphed over and been defeated by the puzzles Will Shortz helped create. One of the many achievements of Wordplay is how it manages to balance so many stories at once. It's so ingeniously constructed that no summary can do it justice. Bookending the film is the 2005 Tournament hosted by Shortz in Stamford, Conn. Predictably, we meet the best players from prior tourneys, setting us up for a finale involving people we know. The puzzlers range from an intensely competitive college student to a deeply introspective studio piano player whose definition of art borders on the sublime. They are misfits all, and you expect that in a film about championship crossword puzzling. But these are the proudest misfits you'll ever meet. Some of the most effective scenes in the movie don't involve the competitors at all. Wordplay moderates the geek factor to great effect by interviewing prominent American crossword devotees. Among them are the Yankees' Mike Mussina, folk-rock act the Indigo Girls, former President Bill Clinton, former Senator Bob Dole, filmmaker Ken Burns and comedian Jon Stewart. Stewart, whom you know (or should know) from television's "The Daily Show," is in full mock-attack mode here, repeatedly challenging Shortz to a fight over the difficulty of his puzzles. It's a brilliant act. Only Stewart could turn crosswords into a life or death event. As if this weren't enough to make Wordplay exceptionally entertaining, the movie documents the creation of a single puzzle from master puzzle constructor Merl Reagle. To Reagle, puzzle creation is as simple as reciting the alphabet. If he didn't look like Bigfoot, he might be a crossover celebrity. Later, in a brilliant example of how tightly fitted together Wordplay's parts are, the celebrities are given Merl's puzzle, which they attempt to solve with uneven results. You've never seen your heroes more real than while they're struggling with the Sunday crossword. It's fantastic. In the end, Wordplay isn't about crossword puzzles at all. It's about how far people will go to solve problems and how competition brings out our best and worst natures. What is intelligence? What does it mean to be human? These are the questions at the heart of this film. Easily one of the strongest movies of the year, Wordplay deserves the widest audience possible. It's a subtle and inspiring work. It boasts top-class production and visual effects — yes, it even has cool special effects — but its charms are predominantly human in nature. Never is this more obvious than when Ellen, a self-proclaimed nerd and Tournament champion, answers her boyfriend's teasing with this proud retort: What are you best in the country at?" Wordplay opens Friday, July 21 at the Bijou.
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