4 letter word for produced offspring
I picked up Wordplay thanks to the VT library’s immense collection of new and hard-to-find DVDs. It’s a documentary about crossword puzzles. Sounds pretty boring, right? Who wants to watch over an hour’s worth of footage of geeks gathering and competing in a national crossword puzzle event?
I’ll tell you who: every nerd, geek, and any person who has ever had an interest in something that the mainstream considers lame. If you’ve ever drooled over the Star Wars films as a child, if you ever thought 3D art was absolutely mind-blowing, if you laugh at math jokes, you will adore Wordplay. Not only is the movie superbly produced, but it touches on the human element, requiring you to become sympathetic to their plight for friendship and community lest your own conscience be rendered frigid.
And there’s an added bonus to watching Wordplay: you’ll want to do a crossword puzzle when you’re done. I personally haven’t done a crossword puzzle in… a long time. I’m not a fan of doing them on newsprint, so I was glad to see that the NYTimes had some archived puzzles. Plus, when you’re doing a crossword on the computer, on the internet, well, you get to cheat.
That took me an hour to complete. And, I cheated without remorse, utilizing Google, Google Earth, Paralink Translator, and my thesaurus widget. Now I’m able to see the crossword puzzle appeal. If only I knew some more… stuff. I did one on global bodies of water, assuming that I knew more geography then fine arts or politics. If only they had an acoustics crossword, or physics - I’d lay a smackdown so intense as to induce a phase shift in the cosmic symphony.
Ok, so I’m going to go do some more puzzles. It’s not addicting yet, but, we’ll see.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
You should watch King of Kong. It’s a documentary of a guy trying to beat the all time best Donkey Kong score. It’s a good nerd movie.
May 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I have to say that, although I liked Wordplay, I found Spellbound much more endearing — maybe because it was about kids, or maybe because a long time ago I was a spelling-bee nerd myself. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a try.
May 17th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Oh, and my method of cheating on the Sunday Washington Post crossword puzzle is to do it with my husband, who is even more helpful than Google in some respects.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
i’ve done crossword after crossword and i did one about math in 5 minutes. take that, new york times.