Wordplay

I finally got around to watching Wordplay this past weekend, after letting it languish on my DVR for weeks and weeks and weeks. It's a documentary about the venerable New York Times crossword puzzle, its current editor Will Shortz, and the subculture of competitive crossword puzzlers -- specifically, attendees of the 28th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which Shortz founded. As dry as that may sound to some, the film was really well constructed (that's a crossword joke) -- informative, amusing, and surprisingly dramatic. And inspiring... I'm thinking about whether I could get down to Brooklyn for the weekend of 2/29/08 and try my hand at it. Hmmm...

Tangentially speaking... writing about Wordplay reminded me of a site I hadn't visited for quite a while: Wordie, which bills itself as "Like Flickr, but without the photos". In lieu of uploading photos, you can upload (OK, type) your favorite words into public lists in a somewhat spartan social networking sort of environment. When you add a word to your list, you then see a list of all users that listed the same word, and any comments they may have left behind. Fun and interesting, in a specific and extremely geeky way. But hey, that's me (and these are my words). Perhaps I should add "bunkwash"?