Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers - Softcover

Fatsis, Stefan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142002267 ISBN 13: 9780142002261

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2002

Synopsis

Scrabble may be truly called America's game. But for every group of "living-room players" there is someone who is "at one with the board." In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis introduces readers to those few, exploring the underground world of colorful characters for which the Scrabble game is life-playing competitively in tournaments across the country. It is also the story of how the Scrabble game was invented by an unemployed architect during the Great Depression and how it has grown into the hugely successful, challenging, and beloved game it is today. Along the way, Fatsis chronicles his own obsession with the game and his development as a player from novice to expert. More than a book about hardcore Scrabble players, Word Freak is also an examination of notions of brilliance, memory, language, competition, and the mind that celebrates the uncanny creative powers in us all.

A Book Sense 76 pick.

About this title

Review

Like a cross between a linguistic spy and a lexicographic Olympic athlete, journalist Stefan Fatsis gave himself a year to penetrate the highest echelons of international Scrabble competition. His aim was to progress from the casual living room player to get into the elite club of international Scrabble pros. Word Freak is the account of his journey. It's a wacky grab bag of travelogue, history, party journal and psychological study of the misfits and goofballs whose lives are measured out in Scrabble tiles.

Fatsis gives us all the facts about Scrabble--from the story of the down-on-his luck architect who invented the game in the 1930s to the intricacies of individual international competitions and the corporate wars to control the world's favourite word game. He is a good storyteller and keeps the reader turning the pages as we get involved in the lives of the Scrabble obsessives: men and women who have a point to prove against the world and have chosen Scrabble as their playground and their pulpit. As Fatsis goes on his own quest to attain the coveted 1600 rating we actually get obsessed with him as he lies awake at night pondering moves and memorising lists of words. For anybody who is interested in words and has ever been captivated and fascinated by Scrabble, Word Freak provides a compelling, entertaining and absorbing read. --Dwight Longenecker

Review

"An engrossing, inside look at the strange and rareified world of competitive Scrabble. It's a pleasure to experience vicariously a level of play that I'll never achieve!" --Will Shortz, New York Times crossword editor and puzzle master of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday

"Fatsis . . . writes with affectionate zeal about the game and the fraternity of brilliant, lonely, and otherwise dysfunctional oddballs it attracts." --The New York Times

"Word Freak has an impassioned subtitle, and it lives up to every word." --People

"Fatsis is a wonderful writer." --The New York Times Book Review

"A can't-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage." --Los Angeles Times

"Funny, thoughtful, character-rich, unchallengeably winning writing." --The Atlantic Monthly

"While a book about Scrabble sounds as appealing as a work on the beauties of watching paint dry, Fatsis brings drama and suspense to the game....His crisp reporting is enough to make the reader hyperventilate." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Word Freak is a fascinating look into a thriving, cultish world that's best admired from an armchair." --The Christian Science Monitor

"Fatsis's marvelously absorbing excursion into the world of Scrabble...is a walk on the wild side of words and ventures into the zone where language and mathematics intersect.... Fatsis clearly doesn't regard Scrabble as just 'a board game, ' and he tells us its history in loving detail." --San Jose Mercury News

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0142002267
• ISBN 13: 9780142002261
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 416