This was enjoyable, non-serious non-fiction, but I could have done without a lot of the excruciating detail of every match.

Woof- probably a 2.5 ⭐️ review, but I know that I will have to make a decision whether it is two or three by the end of this review. There is probably a lot of potential in this book, and generally, I love the "author immerses themselves in the topic" genre. Bill Bryson and Hunter S. Thompson are notable examples. Unfortunately, Fatsis isn't as self-aware as Bryson or as gleefully insane as Thompson.

Fatsis is probably a normal person whose story would have been much more appealing if we had any way to relate to him. His quest for Scrabble expertise seems relatable enough. Could you break three hours in a marathon? Earn a Masters? Learn how to reconstruct a classic car? But Fatsis just dives into this Scrabble journey with very little backstory and hopes we follow along with his intensity.

The world of competitive Scrabble seems to be built on people who are similarly unrelatable. Almost all are middle-aged men, often unemployed or underemployed, with personality quirks that even Fatsis can't make appealing. And he likes these people. Many of them consistently rely on Fatsis for money, travel and shelter. Fatsis insists these repeated intrusions are based in friendship, but it seems to be a mutually exploitative relationship. Elite players get financial assistance and Fatsis gets insight into the higher level of Scrabble, as well as opportunities he may not have previously had.

The research and personal investment are laudable, but Fatsis doesn't really humanize anyone to a point where the story is engaging. He is short sighted in covering the lower levels, and intentionally includes a scant two pages to women players, who are approximately 50% of the field.

Nothing bad, but felt like it dragged on. It’s truly all scrabble talk for 400 pages.

The author, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, took a one-year leave of absence to delve into the world of competitive Scrabble. I truly enjoy playing Scrabble recreationally and found the strategies and personalities very interesting.
I'm pretty sure this book is of interest to a small audience. Published in ~2001, it probably was a given as a gift to a lot of people looking for something for that off-beat Scrabble player in their lives.

i'll get back to it eventually.

Not content to be a mere observer, Fatsis took up Scrabble and became a competition level player himself. And boy did he drink the Kool Aid. The Kool Aid of being a gigantic d*ckwad about Scrabble. The book is informative and interesting if you're into Scrabble (I am), but all of it is colored by his nasty streak and sneering at pretty much everyone who is not an expert-ranked player. Frankly, it's a little sad.

I'm still kind of bad at Words With Friends :(

Stefan Fatsis set out to document the world of competitive Scrabble. To find the obsessive players and tell their stories. He ended up becoming one of them.

Competitive Scrabble is a whole different game than what's regularly played among friends at the kitchen table. There are official dictionaries with thousands of words you'd never recognize or use in conversation. Success at the highest level means literally spending years memorizing these words - the twos, the threes, the sevens, the fours, the fives, and so on.

This book has its highs and lows. Some of the characters are interesting. Some of the history is interesting. Seeing what Fatsis goes through is great. But the endless tournaments and the endless word obsession - it just dragged on. It rarely takes me 2 full weeks to read a book that's less than 400 pages. At times it was enjoyable, but at times it was a slog. Much like Scrabble was for the author, I guess.

I've come back to this three or four times since i first read it in 2001, which means I clearly enjoy it. The writing is fun, watching Fatsis' descent into Scrabble Madness even as he observes the people in its throes and thinks "that can't happen to me" ending with "my god, it's happening to me" is amusing and there's a solid amount of basic scrabble strategy in there. It's nice to read a book about a subculture/fandom by someone who legitimately enters and cares about that fandom that is still completely accessible to the outsider.

On this read some of the classic fandom subculture elements of internal misogyny became more apparent - that the bulk of the level 4 players are older women, whom the highly competitive (male) players dismiss as "Blue Hairs" - and make me wonder what was going unsaid in the chapter where he interviews 3 of the very few women playing at level 1. The last decade of shining a light on this unspoken and accepted behavior in my own subcultures made it pop more on this read. Live and learn.

Although I haven't yet succumbed to playing Scrabble (due to my knack for finding only words like UMSCHLAG and BEURRE), over the weekend I read Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis's book about ultra-serious tournament players.

Fatsis takes an unusual tack for a journalist: instead of just following the players around, he competes himself. His subjects become his mentors as he studies word lists, drives to tournaments and obsesses over his rating. In the end, I thought this was a mistake, because the last 20% or so of the book -- when it becomes more about Fatsis and less about the other players -- feels superfluous. By the time Fatsis is getting to be any good, we've already seen all his strategies used by better players.

The experts are all astonishing anagrammers. They make study lists of alphabetically-listed seven-letter sets (like AEEINRT) that form "bingoes" like RETINAE, TRAINEE and ARENITE. (That list is actually unusual insofar as most of the words are recognizable -- many of the acceptable Scrabble words are decidedly unfamiliar. More typical is a list like: DATARIES, DIASTASE, SATIATED, GERANIAL, ALGINATE, GASALIER, TAILGATE, ARGINASE, ARILLATE.) Many of the players are predictably eccentric, but Fatsis avoids portraying them like freaks or exhibits, probably because he ended up befriending them. He manages to depict their obsessions sympatheticcally, even if I never exactly wanted to join in.

I love books that take a tiny subject, make it fascinating, and then satisfy that fascination. Word Freak, for me, satisfied more interest than it ever actually awakened; its main fault is that it's too thorough for the casual reader. As faults go, that's a pretty minor one, and I'd recommend it to any word-loving nerd.

An enjoyable tribute to Scrabble. The history of the game mixed in with the current tournament circuit provides a backdrop of immersion journalism. Not quite George Plimpton, Fatsis still tells an interesting story. The various characters are eccentric and some of the experiences are helpful with tips for play. Fans of the game should be enthralled while those of us who are recreational users might find the word play sections a bit much.

Work Freak is a very interesting non fiction of an average reporting turning to obsession about professional Scrabble players. The book is filled with eccentric characters that make all the word plays and mathematics tolerable. This book taught me that winning at scrabble isn't really about word vocabulary, but memorization of playable words. The words that are playable are different in other regions.

My problems with the book are that it keeps going to far a head of itself a couple of times, and we get an author's note to explain the inconsistencies. The author makes himself part of the story, I didn't really start caring for his story, until he becomes obsessive.

I recommend this book to all scrabble players, there will be something you will learn about the game, either a new word or a new way of playing.