"Generally speaking, in crosswords, I prefer vocabulary that everyone knows to proper names that some people know and some don't. Yet despite the backlash, Shortz told me he stands by his decision. I think she’s enormously appealing," she notes. "Julie Delpy is an actress, screenwriter and songwriter with two Oscar nominations. Gorski herself says she was surprised and disappointed such an esteemed artist-a woman spotlighted by the Timesitself just a year ago-would be considered too "unappealing" for the nation's most pedigreed puzzle. Julie DELPY is welcome in my #crossword any day of the week. Rex Parker, known for his own popular blog about the Times puzzle, tweeted: One of the entries he wanted edited out of the grid because it was 'unappealing' was DELPY? Julie Delpy, star of the acclaimed 18-year Richard Linklater trilogy with Ethan Hawke? Before Sunrise in 1995, Before Sunset in 2004, and Before Midnight in 2013 were all great films (still need to see the third one!) and I would have loved seeing DELPY in the puzzle. "I checked out Will Shortz’s notes on this puzzle at Wordplay, and I’m dumbfounded. On her " Diary of a Crossword Fiend" blog, Amy Reynaldo remarked: The curious decision to rid the puzzle of such a notable female figure created a relative uproar in the usually calm crossword community. Given the presence of those individuals, Gorski says, "I welcomed the opportunity to include Delpy-a strong, accomplished, contemporary woman." ![]() Yet plenty of seemingly equally known male figures were left in, including BRUCE LEE, WALDO PEPPER, LINUS and BERNINI. The prompt? " Intimate Affairs actress." The answer? Julie DELPY, the award-winning director, actress and singer-songwriter.Įditor Will Shortz, in his public notes about the puzzle, said he found the Delpy entry to be " unappealing"-with no other explanation given-and so excised it. Except in Gorski's original puzzle, 54 down was another clue and answer entirely. ![]() In it was this clue, positioned at 54 down: "What a big mouth might have." Answer? DELTA. Just over a month ago, Elizabeth Gorski, one of the premier crossword puzzle constructors for the Times and other prominent outlets-and one of only a handful of star female constructors in the whole biz-had a puzzle published in the Wednesday Times. A tone-deaf comment on a cable-TV network.īut many other times, these issues manifest in far more subtle ways-as subtle, even, as a seemingly mundane New York Times crossword puzzle clue. Often, a gender politics issue manifests in an obvious way: a new law that hinders women's rights. ![]() He even majored in enigmatology, the study of puzzles, a course of study he created himself at Indiana University.Įarly in the film, Shortz reads us his mail at the Times, in which people alternately praise him and call him "sick, sick, sick" for bending their minds so. ![]() Shortz has been making puzzles since he was eight, and sold his first one at 14. Like Bill Gates or Tiger Woods, he not only excels at his craft, he helped put it on the map. But then we meet some of the major players, and their quirk and passion starts to win us over.Ĭhief among these major players is Will Shortz, the man who launched the tournament and edits the granddaddy of the sport: The New York Times crossword puzzle. For neophytes like myself, finding out that puzzle aficionados actually gather once a year to competitively complete puzzles in real time seems amusing. Wordplay opens at the 28th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stanford, Connecticut. And Wordplay would be a fabulous little black dress. If the movie industry were the world of fashion, documentaries would be the new black. Talk about a six-letter word for snooze-worthy starting with the letter B.īut if we've learned anything in recent years from those plucky penguins and all those spelling and salsa-dancing middle-schoolers, it's that documentaries have undergone an extreme makeover of late. When I told a friend that I'd been assigned to write a review of Wordplay, and then explained that it's a documentary about the world of crossword puzzles, she looked at me with empathy-as if I were going in for a root canal.
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