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Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog

Will Shortz and ‘Wordplay’

Forgive me for not getting back to the blog any sooner. It isn’t for lack of interest; just conflict with the holiday rituals.

I promised a review of Will Shortz’ documentary film Wordplay upon my return and I am prepared to do that now. I think I can sidestep my jealousy at this point. Yes, Dr. Goodword is jealous of two people: Richard Lederer and Will Shortz. Both succeeded in making a living playing with words while I was laboring away in a Chomskyan framework trying just to understand them.

I really enjoyed meeting the people who write and work crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles are an enjoyable intellectual challenge, which is why we carry several types of them on our website. (Our New Year’s resolution will be to update them more frequently.) However, this film is less about crossword puzzles than about the people who write them and the famous people who work them (Jon Stewart, President Clinton, Ken Burns, and the Indigo Girls among others).

The central figure in the film is Will himself, reading his mail, reading a puzzle to a participant on his PBS radio program, and emceeing the 28th Annual Crossword Competition in Stamford, Connecticut—nothing to produce a thrill a minute. As much as I love words and people who love words, I had to fast-forward several times to be able to say watching the film was time well spent. The problem is that the film is about the people who write and work crosswords with little said about the fascinating world of words itself.

The bulk of the film focuses on a competition for the fastest crossword puzzle solvers in the country. I’m not sure how anyone can enjoy words when their goal is to spit them out as fast as possible. I write Good Words to be savored; maybe that it my problem with the film. In the past 20 years of this competition, only 7 of the 400-500 people who compete each year have won. Are these people with rich vocabularies? Interesting lives? A better understanding of the world around them? As best I could judge, they just solve crossword puzzles faster than anyone else, a kind of lexical athlete.

Interesting documentaries about words can be made. American Tongues and the PBS series The Story of English are fascinating but, of course, they are not about puzzles. The spelling bee movies, Bee Season and Spellbound are fascinating. Granted they are not documentaries but they show how films based on words can capture your attention. Perhaps a history of crosswords from the Romans (Greeks?) onward would work. But the people who write them, talking about themselves and each other, is not the sort of excitement that even logophiles expect of the American film industry today.

My favorite crossword puzzle film is an unrated (so help me) four-part BBC series starring Alan Bates and Sinéad Cusack called Oliver’s Travels. The wordplay is the witty banter between the two main characters as they search for the legendary British crossword creator “Aristotle” from London to the Orkneys. Of course, the problem here is the fact that crosswords are in the background—but maybe that is where they should be. In order to make this film exciting, thriller plot was added in which an evil empire chases the heros, taking (real) potshots at them along the way.

OK. I’m not sure how to make an exciting crossword or word puzzle thriller and I am glad to have made a one-sided acquaintance with the foremost word puzzler and the fastest crossword puzzle workers in the country and I’ve already admitted that I am jealous of the star of this film. But whatever my motivation, I still think a golden opportunity was lost.

2 Responses to “Will Shortz and ‘Wordplay’”

  1. Les Boston Says:

    Hello~~

    We are a small publisher with a book co-authored by Richard Lederer, so I was delighted to see your comment about him.

    I’m trying to increase awareness of that book and one other in wordplay and maybe establish some links.

    THE GIANT BOOK OF ANIMAL JOKES: BEASTLY HUMOR FOR GROWNUPS by Richard Lederer and James Ertner (illustrations by James McLean) is a collection of 4,509 howlers, gigglers, and groaners.

    The first section includes animals from Aardvark to Zyzzyva.
    The second section includes jokes in categories such as bars, classrooms, daffynitions, mixes, crosses, knock-knocks, Q&A, Tom Swifties, vets’ offices, zoos.

    In any group, there may be riddles, puns, “Did-you-hear-the one about___?” or “Why-did-the___ ____?” or other joke formulations.

    There is an index.

    The other book of wordplay:

    STOOPNAGLE’S TALE IS TWISTED: SPOONERISMS RUN AMOK by Keen James (illustrations by François Boutet) is an updated version of MY TALE IS TWISTED by Col. Stoopnagle, radio comedian in the 1930s and 40s.

    “Beeping Sleauty,” “Prinderella and the Since,” The Pea Little Thrigs,” and 40 others tales and fables are back in print with added material about Spooner, spoonerisms, and Stoopnagle.

    We have a hub on each book.
    We can send anchor copy.
    We can send review copies.

    We’d be delighted to appear on this or other website. I’ll return to open the sites listed below.

    Cheers~~
    Les Boston

    Stone and Scott, Publishers
    PO Box 56419
    Sherman Oaks, CA 91412-1419

    http://www.StoneandScott.com
    Friday@StoneandScott.com
    818-904-9088

    Thanks.

    Cheers~~

    Les Boston

    Stone and Scott, Publishers
    PO Box 56419
    Sherman Oaks, CA 91412-1419

    http://www.StoneandScott.com
    Friday@StoneandScott.com
    818-904-9088

  2. Review Experts Says:

    That rss option on your site here is impressive, you should tell people about it in your upcoming post. I haven’t noted it for the first couple of times, now I’m using it each morning to check on any updates. I’m on a real slow dial-up connection in Australia and it’s rather daunting to sit there and wait for such a long time ’til the page loads… but hey, I just found your rss page and added it to the Google Reader and voil? – I’m always up-to-date! Well buddy, keep up the good work and make that rss button a little bigger so that other people can enjoy that as well 😛

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