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Wordplay
IFC Films


7.4

based on 35 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 11 votes
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MPAA RATING: PG for some language and mild thematic elements

Starring Will Shortz, Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart, Ken Burns, Mike Mussina, Bob Dole, and the Indigo Girls

Wordplay focuses on the man most associated with crossword puzzles, New York Times puzzle editor and NPR Puzzle Master Will Shortz. Director Patrick Creadon introduces us to this passionate hero, as well as to the inner workings of his brilliant and often hilarious contributors and many celebrity crossword puzzlers. (IFC Films)

GENRE(S):	Documentary
WRITTEN BY:	Patrick Creadon Christine O'Malley
DIRECTED BY:	Patrick Creadon
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: November 7, 2006 Theatrical: June 16, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	94 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Nominated, Grand Jury Prize (Documentary), 2006 Sundance Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Near letter-perfect.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

When I first heard about Wordplay, I assumed I wouldn't have an ort of interest.

USA Today Claudia Puig

If it's challenges you're after, forget cracking "The Da Vinci Code." Wordplay captures the exhilaration that comes from navigating the ins and outs of complex puzzles.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It's also very cleverly edited - one scene will often branching off from another in much the same way a crossword puzzle works - and features a bang-up ending that will actually leave you cheering over a word game.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

At times the film resembles a promo for Shortz and the Times, and the celebrity puzzlers, who include filmmaker Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, and the Indigo Girls, have an unfortunate tendency to bloviate. Not so Jon Stewart, who seems to regard each Times puzzle as an opportunity to go mano a mano with Shortz.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Gianni Truzzi

In Creadon's most effective and inspired sequence, he gets Reagle to create a puzzle using the film's title as its theme. It's during the sequence that we learn the lofty rules of creating crosswords, including lateral symmetry and a maximum ratio of black to white space.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

What's an eight-letter word for a non-fiction feature that is witty, wise and wonderful? "Wordplay."

Time Richard Corliss

This film is as smart and funny as its topic and its stars.

The New York Times Phillip Lopate

Whatever the documentary's flaws, the filmmakers should be saluted for giving us a rare glimpse of life in these trenches.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The fact that Wordplay works as a film at all is a testament to its skill. The New York Times may never find a better marketing tool.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

There's genuine suspense and a lot of humor.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Opens up a world of words.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Manages to turn an internal, solitary activity into fodder for an engaging, even exciting movie.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

In breezy fashion, it introduces us to a handful of crossword savants, the history of crossword puzzles, a number of celebrity crossword addicts...

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Shortz's gentle manner and French-foreign-agent mustache go a long way toward making him a thinking girl's pinup nerd - and this despite the man's pitiless insistence on making the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle ''tough as a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.''

New York Post Lou Lumenick

As someone who has never completed a crossword puzzle, I was surprised how engaged I was by Wordplay.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

It's light, it's bright and it succeeds precisely where the lesser doc fails -- by setting modest targets and hitting them square on.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The film's subjects are almost uniformly likable, self-deprecating, funny, and hyper-verbal, and their peculiar passion for crosswords and the sense of genial camaraderie among buffs proves surprisingly infectious.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

There's more palm-sweating suspense in one minute of this baby than in all of "The Omen."

Premiere Ethan Alter

Ultimately, Wordplay is best enjoyed as an engaging look at a little-known subculture.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

In this documentary, I learn there are people who can solve a Monday New York Times puzzle in less than three minutes - without looking words up! I don't necessarily want to know these people, but they put on a good show at the annual crossword championship in Stamford, Ct., which is the centerpiece of this affectionate, smartly-done promo for puzzling.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

While puzzles are not most peoples' lives, they are truly an essential part. Wordplay goes up/down and across on the varied reasons why more than 50 million Americans do a crossword puzzle every week.

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 documentary Wordplay.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Niceness also takes the edge off Patrick Creadon's otherwise revitalizing documentary.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Another doc sharing some of its cultural DNA, the spelling-bee melodrama Spellbound, had children, families, social conventions--Creadon's film has only words and people with a little time to waste.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

At its best when Creadon is burrowing deep into the world of the puzzles themselves, particularly when he sits down with puzzle constructor extraordinaire Merl Reagle.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

Mostly it's just a sweet and lightly funny piece of highbrow piffle, as enjoyable as it is forgettable. There's no harm done, but there's not much else either.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Wordplay offers a running tutorial in how crosswords are created - lessons that are enhanced by the onscreen graphics of designer Brian Oakes, which, come tournament time, allow moviegoers to see the clues and grids the contestants are working on, theoretically allowing us to solve the puzzles along with them.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Creadon and his editor, Douglas Blush, add verve to an otherwise talky exercise by cutting Wordplay as if it were a puzzle itself, with Across and Down camera moves and blocks of black space. A visual pun altogether worthy of those being filled in on screen.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Delightful.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

In segments such as the Reagle and Clinton interviews, where character is revealed via puzzle style, Wordplay succeeds. The film is less successful when it travels to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Sweet, indulgent, and surprisingly soft in the center; the most minor entry in the brainiac-doc genre to date, it's nevertheless a perfectly entertaining hour and a half for crossword adepts.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is mildly entertaining, though like the puzzles themselves, it favors diversion over wisdom.

Film Threat Eric Campos

Wordplay is...well...just about as exciting as a feature length movie about people solving crossword puzzles can be. Not very.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ld H. gave it a9:
It's puzzling that such an entertaining movie should have such a small audience.

Marc K. gave it a5:
I thought this would be an interesting movie with interesting people, and didn't feel that to be the case. Additionally, maybe I'm just the only one, but I felt sorry for a lot of these people...many of them are misfits, and the get-together in Stamford, CT appeared to be one of the only times these people were happy and confident.

George R. gave it a9:
Many people have already remarked on how cleverly edited the piece is, interweaving dozens of characters and subjects in much the same way a crossword puzzle works, a visual pun in itself. But for me, just as frustrating as any Friday puzzle, was to take in Bill Clinton again, who in his very brief, though thoroughly engaging appearance here, demonstrated once again that he may have been our last great president; formidably brilliant, curiously elastic, and genuinely human. In the film he tells a story about how the New York Times, on the eve of the Dole-Clinton Election, unaware of its outcome, published a puzzle that allowed the possibility for both results to be correct. In a true act of good sportsmanship, Clinton sent the completed puzzle to Dole the next morning, indicating modestly that both solutions could be true.

Jim G. gave it a6:
An engaging documentary with a deft, if unquestioning, touch for its subjects. Somehow, for some reason (don't ask me why), I was hoping for something more substantive. I felt entertained by the film, but didn't come away with any new knowledge or new questions. So as entertainment, it was fun. As documentary, it was, well, just another story. The filmmakers pretty much take everything at face value swallowing, unchallenged, assertions that the New York Times is the greatest newspaper in the world and bastian of the crossword puzzle. Would have been nice to have some substance--perhaps some factual history of the crossword puzzle or probing why the fan base (mostly white, mostly male) is so homogenous. Overall, it is clear from the film that crossword fans enjoy a special community and are having lots of fun.

Paul K. gave it a9:
Before seeing this, I thought the subject matter might be too dry...but half way through I found myself really enjoying this movie. Crossword puzzles, here I come!

J S gave it an8:
Very engaging. At times, I wasn't sure whether I was watching a documentary or a Christopher Guest spoof of one. Suspense, laughter, and genuine affection. All that, plus Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton (both, like most of the people in this film, lefties -- in the handedness sense).

Wordplay IFC Films

Wordplay
IFC Films