A24 isn’t just good at pumping out movies, they’re also really good at pumping out merch in support of their movies. From a collection of horror recipes to an anthology of forgotten movie merch to a book exploring the Euphoria casting process, A24 knows that the best marker of taste isn’t just having watched the movie, but people knowing that you watched the movie.
The studio that keeps on giving (most recently, Bodies Bodies Bodies and Everything Everywhere All At Once) is now gifting us with 99 Movie Crosswords, a book of 99 movie-themed crossword puzzles by puzzle markers at The New York Times and The New Yorker, which will be available from the A24 shop starting August 10. Edited by Anna Shechtman, prolific puzzle maker savant of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, who made her first crossword at age 14, the book includes nine puzzles that co-created with filmmakers, actors and composers, including David Lowery, Jenny Slate, Lulu Wang, Tim Heidecker, Emile Mosseri, Stephanie Hsu, Elsie Fisher, Megan Amram, and Ashley Clark.
No matter what kind of cinephile you are, there’s a crossword for you including, everything from movie musicals and queer cinema to Soviet cinema and stoner classics. There are puzzles for John Waters superfans, namely, a puzzle called “As John Waters Said...” where you finish his quotes, as well as puzzles for sci-fi lovers with clues like “alien species in Gremlins.” And would it be an A24 book without Twin Peaks and Stanley Kubrick puzzles? And if you’re more of a Monday Times crossword person than a Sunday Times crossword person, or hey, even a mini crossword person, rest assured: There are crosswords for neophytes to experts, both when it comes to films and crossword difficulty.
"At the intersection of crosswords and cinema, there is devotion: avid fans who structure their days around the morning puzzle or the evening screening,” Shechtman writes in her introduction. “Proclaimed logophiles and cinephiles are drawn to these mediums because they promise an escape from daily life while nonetheless depicting its most essential concerns: communication, common knowledge, representation of niche subcultures, and an expression of the zeitgeist.”
The obsessiveness of two great American past times (three if you count the intellectual superiority that comes from both activities...just kidding!) come together in a chic volume you’re going to want to fill out with the finest of pen points.
