MADness—the Blog

It’s a truism in the world of crosswords that the more you know about a subject, the more likely you’ll find something to object to when the subject appears in a puzzle.

An example:  every now and then you’ll see “Velocity” as a clue for SPEED.  When it happens, someone, usually with a background in physics, will say, “Hey, that’s not right.”  They have a point:  ”velocity” and “speed” are not the same thing, in certain contexts.  If you equate the two on a physics test, good chance you’ll get dinged for it.  (If you need to know why, look here.)  The trouble with knowing about physics is that you may think about scalar and vector quantities.  The non-expert thinks in terms of everyday usage, where ”velocity” and “speed” mean very much the same thing.  (If you need to confirm that, check the dictionary.)  The expert pauses, and maybe objects.  The non-expert writes in the answer and moves on.

The same phenomenon happens with movies.  A movie wants to tell a story, not give a finely detailed document of reality.  It will simulate reality to the point that it makes the world it presents believable.  But it does that by approximation.  Even if the director gives ten interviews proclaiming the great effort expended to get all the details exactly right, the film at best is still an approximation.  The ones who know the difference are the ones who know the world inside the movie best.  A scene about meat packing may work for most people, but if there’s an objection from anyone, it’ll be a meat packer.

I’m not a meat packer.  I’m a crossword constructor.  I see a crossword puzzle in a movie, I pay attention.  Most people, even non-solvers, have a fair grasp of what a crossword is, so you’d think it’s not a hard thing to get right in a movie.  But apparently it is.  Crosswords in movies frequently break the conventions that crosswords in the real world adhere to. 

Case in point:  The Cotton Club (1984), Francis Ford Coppola’s Jazz Age gangster film set in Harlem.  I had it on Sunday and had to stop it around the hour-eleven mark.  Here’s a picture.  If you don’t see a problem, you probably don’t do puzzles.

First, let me give the film credit for having a crossword at all.  As I mentioned last week, a crossword craze hit the country during the mid-1920s.  This scene takes place in 1928 or 1929, so it’s fitting for a character to sit down and solve a puzzle.  It’s a good period detail to have in the story.

Before saying more, here’s a caveat.  I’m no expert on puzzles of that era.  I’ve seen puzzles from the 1910s, and from the 1940s on, and what puzzles looked like in the 1920s involves a bit of guesswork.  That said, my guess is that this was a 1980s-vintage puzzle modified for the purposes of the film.

The giveaway is the unchecked white square in the middle of the grid, just to the left of the A in RAGES coming down the center.  That’s a no-no in the crossword trade.  Another no-no is the two-letter word running down the unnumbered white squares to the left of ES in RAGES; standard crosswords require answers to be three letters or longer.  While we’re at it, let’s note that the grid lacks symmetry.  These are blatant errors.  What’s going on?

The puzzle originally was a standard 78-word grid, with regular crossword symmetry, conforming to the usual rules.  The filmmakers, however, decided to add a black square near the middle, just to the left of the G in GANGSTER.  Why?  GANGSTER is the answer being written in during the shot.  It’s the the key word for the scene, and that extra black square makes room to fit its eight letters on the row across.  No other across answer is eight letters long.  GANGSTER had to go somewhere.  (It could have gone down but that would’ve been harder for the audience to read.)

The prop department solved the problem by adding a black square.  Maybe they didn’t know the errors they were creating.  Maybe they didn’t care.  Maybe they didn’t think any of the tens of millions of crossword solvers would notice.  Maybe they didn’t think an answer like GANGSTER had to follow the rules anyway.

The easy fix would have been to use a different crossword grid, one with an 8-letter answer across.  But if you know anything about the making of The Cotton Club, you know easy had nothing to do with it.

The movie cost north of $50 million, and it shows.  The film looks great.  The cars, the clothes, the dancing, the light falling through the smoky club room, the glass breaking in the phone booth from a fusillade of bullets.  Great attention was paid to detail.  The crossword puzzle, not so much.

That’s the way it always is.  Hey, if you need help, Hollywood, just call.  Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for a five-letter answer ending in BW, crossing BEER / WAR.  Can’t say I’ve seen that one before.

It was crosswords week at MAD About Movies (here and here), and to close it out properly I should give you the run-down on results from the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament held this weekend in Brooklyn.

Dan Feyer, still the champ

Congratulations to Dan Feyer, the returning champ who successfully defended his title.  (Conveniently, I have a pic of his from last year’s tournament, above.  He is, understandably, still smiling.)  The competition among super-speedy solvers is especially fierce.  Sometimes a minute or two, or less, is all that separates the top times during a series of puzzles, and one bad guess can derail any hopes for a title.  To make it onstage for the finals is a feat in itself.  To win, and to defend the championship against five-time winner Tyler Hinman (2005-2009) and Anne Erdmann, onstage at the finals for the second year in a row, is a big deal.  Great job, Dan, and congrats to all the finalists.

Here are this year’s champs for the three top divisions:

A – Dan Feyer
B – David Plotkin
C – Jeffrey Dubner

Congrats!  A lot more info, including pics and links, at the ACPT site.

Will Shortz congratulates Dan Feyer on winning the 2011 ACPT

Someone at Visual Thesaurus* has kindly uploaded the finals video to YouTube so we call can see.  Check it out below, and keep in mind that the finals puzzle is an open-grid themeless, and the solvers have the toughest of three sets of clues.  In other words, solving the puzzle—period—is hard.  In under seven minutes—fuggedaboutit!

[*=Ben Zimmer]

ACPT – “A” Division Finals – 2011
Part 1 of 2

From left to right on the boards:  Anne Erdmann, Dan Feyer, Tyler Hinman. 

ACPT – “A” Division Finals – 2011
Part 2 of 2

Master of ceremonies:  Will Shortz.

My son Donovan is just learning about his Irish roots.  The magic of this day is that we are all Irish today, and the magic of this song is that it makes me homesick for a land where I have not been.  Or, maybe I have.

‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

—William Butler Yeats, I Am of Ireland

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Carrickfergus
Van Morrison & the Chieftans

Gram Crackers
Cracker Pack #7

Extra!  Extra!  The March puzzles have arrived!  At the MAD Puzzles page, of course.

If you’re a fan of crosswords, you ought to consider the hajj to Brooklyn later this month.  The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is March 18-20, and you’ll be sure to find a great bunch of people and lots of fun.  All the details are at the ACPT website.

The big winner of the night, with four Academy Awards including Best Picture, is The King’s Speech.  Not my pick but hardly a surprise, either.  I’m disappointed that The Social Network won only three Oscars; it deserved to win for director and picture too.  The Academy’s taste for good, respectable fare with a British royal and a suitable accent knows no bounds.  The Weinstein brothers, who once lassoed a Best Picture for Shakespeare in Love, were not a team to bet against.

A few highlights from the evening:  Aaron Sorkin, ever the writer, with the most eloquent speech of the evening; David Seidler, the self-proclaimed oldest winner in the writer category; Susanne Bier, just the third woman director to win in the foreign-language category; and the too-brief appearance of Billy Crystal, who gave me the first laugh of the show.  (The best hosts in the history of the show have been the great comedians—Crystal, Hope, Carson.  The show succeeds when it’s funny.  The Academy should find a funny, classy comedian who’s young, if that’s where the Academy is aiming, and if there isn’t one—can’t think of a name off the top of my head—they should find someone older who can provide a bit of entertainment.)

Because you probably cannot find a list of winners anywhere else on the web, I offer one below.  (The * indicates winners that I had predicted.  I finished 17 of 24, respectable—and better than Ebert, for what it’s worth—but not likely a winner in the pool.)

Summary of Oscar wins by feature film:

The King’s Speech — 4
Inception — 4
The Social Network — 3
Alice in Wonderland — 2
The Fighter — 2
Toy Story 3 — 2
Black Swan — 1
The Wolfman — 1
In a Better World — 1
Inside Job — 1

Winners by category:

Best Picture

WINNER:  The King’s Speech

Actor in a Leading Role*

WINNER:  Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

Actress in Leading Role*

WINNER:  Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Actor in a Supporting Role*

WINNER:  Christian Bale, The Fighter

Actress in a Supporting Role*

WINNER:  Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Directing

WINNER:  Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech

Writing (Original Screenplay)*

WINNER:  David Seidler, The King’s Speech

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)*

WINNER:  Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Animated Feature Film*

WINNER:  Toy Story 3

Documentary (Feature)*

WINNER:  Inside Job

Documentary (Short Subject)

WINNER:  Stranger No More

Foreign Language Film*

WINNER:  In a Better World

Short Film (Animated)

WINNER:  The Lost Thing

Short Film (Live Action)

WINNER:  God of Love

Art Direction*

WINNER: Alice in Wonderland

Cinematography

WINNER:  Inception

Costume Design

WINNER:  Alice in Wonderland

Film Editing*

WINNER:  The Social Network

Makeup*

WINNER:  The Wolfman

Music (Original Score)*

WINNER:  The Social Network 

Music (Original Song)*

WINNER:  “We Belong Together,” Toy Story 3

Sound Editing*

WINNER:  Inception

Sound Mixing*

WINNER:  Inception

Visual Effects*

WINNER:  Inception

Maria Schneider died on Thursday after a battle with cancer, at 58.  The French actress was best known for the role of Jeanne, opposite Marlon Brando, in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris.  She was 19 at the time.

Bernardo Bertolucci would like to extend a belated apology:

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci said Thursday he wished he could have apologised to the late Maria Schneider for putting her through graphic sex scenes in his classic 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris”.

“Her death has come too early, before I could give her a tender embrace and tell her that I was as tied to her as I was at the start and apologise to her at least once,” Bertolucci was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying.

“The strong and creative relationship that we had during the filming of ‘Last Tango’ became poisoned with the passing of time,” he said.

“Maria accused me of having robbed her of her youth and only today am I wondering whether there wasn’t some truth to that,” he added.

David Thomson ponders if the film ruined her life:

It’s hard now to think the essential purpose of Last Tango in Paris wasn’t to take advantage of Maria Schneider to get our dollars. I don’t mean to say the film lacks anguish, or that Brando isn’t riveting in it. But I’m not sure it was worth doing if it ruined a life. You can argue that actresses know what to expect. Haven’t they heard about show business? Maybe. But some actresses are desperate to believe in what they are doing. Just like actors. Just like us. Let’s tip our hats to Maria Schneider.

Gram Crackers
Cracker Pack #6

    

This month’s new puzzles are here.  They arrive every first Monday of the month, and you can find them at the MAD Puzzles page.

Name that Best Picture nominee.  Need a hint?  Not likely, but the answer can be found at ForeverGeek, along with renderings of all ten Oscar nominees in LEGO art.  Alex Eylar is the film buff/artist.

Last week we looked at Sundance films from years past.  Here are the top award winners from Sundance 2011, presented over the weekend:

Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic:  Like Crazy
Drake Doremus, director
Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence
A cross-continental relationship drama

Audience Award, Dramatic:  Circumstance
Maryam Keshavarz, director
An The Iranian lesbian romance drama (sui generis, I’d bet)

Grand Jury Prize, Documentary:  How to Die in Oregon
Peter D. Richardson, director
A heartrending look at Oregon’s right-to-die law

Audience Award, Documentary:  Buck
Cindy Meeh, director
The story of Buck, the real-life horse appearing in the Robert Redford film The Horse Whisperer

You can get more info and the rest of the winners at the festival blog.