'Philadelphia ends with the same five letters it starts with," says Merl Reagle. "Not too many cities do that."
And not too many people walk around with those kinds of lexicological distinctions in their noggin - dissecting words, analyzing vowels, looking for syllables that do things apart from just being syllabic.
"And D-E, which is what links those same five letters in Philadelphia, that stands for Delaware, which is right across the river there," he adds.
Reagle, 56, constructs crosswords for a living. Since 1995, his black-and-white boxes and tricky, punny, edifying clues have run on Sundays in this newspaper. (His puzzles run in papers in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and other burgs, too.) In certain circles - the circles of the crossword square - he is a god.
So, too, is Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times' much-pored-over puzzles. The Newman and Redford of the cruciverbalist set, Reagle and Shortz are, in fact, the stars of their very own movie - Wordplay, opening Friday at the Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ.
The documentary delves into the linguistic realm of constructors and solvers, of famous crossword junkies like Bill Clinton, Mike Mussina and Jon Stewart, and lesser-known puzzle obsessives like self-described "nerd-girl" Ellen Ripstein and Hewlett-Packard project manager Al Sanders.
It's fascinating, and, yes, suspenseful stuff - even if you've never, ever picked up a pencil and been stumped by a clue.
"If you were to see a documentary about a band, there's two ways to make it," explains Patrick Creadon, 39, Wordplay's director. "To make it just for the hard-core fans of that band, which is OK, but it's kind of limiting. Or make it for a general audience and say, this is why this band is interesting. That was definitely our approach - let's shine the light on a topic so that non-puzzle people would say, 'Wow, I never knew that!' "
That light shines so brightly that Creadon's directorial debut started a bidding war at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Seven companies lined up for the distribution rights. IFC Films won out, for about $1 million.
"This is a festival this year where the Beastie Boys had a movie there, the Police had a movie there, and Al Gore had a movie there," Creadon says.
"There were all these celebrity docs going on, and yet the crossword crowd was - I don't want to say mobbed, but I mean, after the screenings people really wanted to meet you guys," he says, looking over at Reagle and Shortz.
