Saturday, September 02, 2006

Word obsessions

We went to see Wordplay today. It's a documentary about Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle and the people who solve these puzzles. There are people that can solve the NYT crossword puzzle in 5 minutes! I can only solve the Monday and sometimes Tuesday puzzles. I can barely attempt the weekend puzzles, and these people can solve them in almost no time at all. The documentary focused on the annual crossword puzzle tournament held in Stamford, Connecticut each year. I guess people will compete at almost anything.

The documentary itself is pretty good. I actually prefer Word Wars, which is about people who participate in the National Scrabble Association tournament each year. The people that that documentary followed are much geekier and stranger than the crossword puzzle people. Those crossword people had jobs and talents other than just their word obsessions :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am very jealous that you saw that movie! Needless to say, it's not playing at the 30-seat Lido Theatre in Fort St. James.

I can now finish the Monday puzzle in 15 to 20 minutes, and I recently completed my first Friday, although I usually can only finish up to Thursday. But then, I've been doing the puzzle every single day for 9 months, so there you go. It just takes practice - and you have to love doing it!
Love,
Vicki