Who woulda thunk a book about Scrabble could be this engaging? The author quit his job (or took a sabbatical, I guess) to play Scrabble for two years and got his rating up above 1700 (Expert level). This book is about what it took to do that, the various quirky people he encountered at the parks and tournaments where he played, how Scrabble was invented and marketed and sold ... the whole shebang. Toward the very end of the book, he suggests why Scrabble gets such a hold on people; unlike some other games which are highly cerebral but unchanging in their start and pieces (chess, for example) and other games which are mostly determined by luck (Yahtzee or Monopoly), this game rests on both skill and luck. 10,000 hours of studying pays off: the two-letter words, the three-letter words, the four-letter words, etc., the anagrams of common letter groups, learning how to use "tails," how to minimize the chances of the opponent hanging letters off your words, how to count the tiles and track them so you can guess the odds of letters still in the bag. But because it's both, it taps into something deeply psychological; this is more like life; some luck, some skill, ever-changing conditions, constant feedback from others that must be interpreted and used in some way. Doesn't always feel fair (as in, Hey! Why did my opponent get both blanks!?). The book lagged a bit in the middle for me during the parts about how the game became a business, but picked up again when he returned to his own story. The writing is intelligent and engaging and often very funny. Would definitely recommend, not just for Scrabble players.

I am a word freak. Even the boring bits fascinated me -- and took me away from my own compulsive playing of Words with Friends (you don't have to look things up since the computer does it for you!)

What's a witty anagram of ARDUOUS?

The compelling thing about autoethnographies is the potential that the author will become fully immersed in the subculture he is studying. This happens in Word Freak, but while Stefan's rise to the top tier of the game is applaudable, it's just so boring and predictable.

"Jim Geary believes that games aren't worth playing unless they can be played to their theoretical maximum."

This makes for a somewhat intriguing story filled with plenty of anecdotes you can share at cocktail parties, but, ultimately, it's the obliteration of the English language at the highest level of play that makes the book so hard to get through. I see why competing for the sake of competing is fun and even cathartic. However, the sheer ridiculousness of the words being used dwarfs all other aspects of the game and makes it difficult to draw similarities to chess.

The author seems to grasp this at some level, and I found humor in his inclusion of many words' definitions. The history of Scrabble and his coverage of some of the most prominent characters is the best part of the book, while his musings surrounding his personal struggles really did nothing for me. I guess I would rather him tell it like it is than have some Hollywood moment where he subtly communicates he's become a Word Freak without coming right out and saying it, but he puts it very bluntly which eliminates any mystique. Later, though, he goes on to talk about how pointless the game ultimately is.

I love playing word games and I'd most definitely be classified as a Living Room Player. The reason it took me so long to finish this book was because at some point it triggered a Boggle kick. I haven't yet decided if it was a result of being inspired by the subject matter or abject boredom.

I should qualify my rating here by saying that I did not in fact like this book, as the literal interpretation of Goodreads' three-star rating would indicate-- I thought it was more of a two-star book ("it was OK")-- but I'm giving it a bonus star, because it contains a most valuable lesson that I don't know whether I could have learned so quickly and easily, had I not read this book.

As for the book itself: it's pretty hard to like, because the voice of the author, which also doubles as the persona of the "main character" in the ongoing story underlying the research and reporting, paints the author as a jerk. One the one hand, Fatsis seems to have no compunction about boasting about his superior Scrabble skills in comparison to other Scrabble-playing hoi polloi; on the other hand, when he becomes immersed in the world of seriously competitive Scrabble and finds that his skills and knowledge are woefully beneath the level of the pros, he wastes no time in tarring the pros as a bunch of maladjusted wacko nerds. This sour-grapes treatment reeks of intellectual bullying to me, and it makes it pretty hard to care about the author's experiences or sympathize with him whenever he receives a humbling defeat. This distaste lingers throughout the book and ultimately detracts from its enjoyability-- it's hard to like a book whose author and main character is a consummate dill-hole.

However, as I mentioned above, the experience of reading the book is somewhat redeemed by the valuable lesson it contains. Before reading this, I often wondered to myself: "Hey, I'm half decent at Scrabble. Should I maybe take it more seriously, and devote some of my spare time to trying to reach the next level of expertise? Should I enter tournaments and try to play competitively?" Now that I've read this book, I know the answers to these questions conclusively: Hell no! The author's vivid depiction of the world of competitive Scrabble makes it abundantly clear that one has no hope of becoming a serious Scrabble expert unless one is willing to devote the majority of one's free time (or probably, the majority of one's time, period) over many years to etching the complete Scrabble lexicon into one's memory, and also learning to think in anagrams to the same extent that we normally think in words. The relatively small group of players who form the highest ranks of the competitive world are on a plane that Scrabble hobbyists, no matter how good they are, cannot hope to attain without devoting themselves entirely to the game. Having learned this lesson via this book, I found myself feeling like a massive burden had been lifted from me-- I no longer need to think for even a second about whether I should attempt to more fully realize my "Scrabble potential." And I can thus go back to enjoying the game perhaps even more than I did before, now that I know that it can never be more than a hobby for me. And for this valuable knowledge, I owe Fatsis (and this book) my thanks.

First of all I saw a film called "Word Wars" which quickly became one of my favourite documentaries of all time and then a friend of mine at work lent me this book - and if you haven't read this or seen the film they are probably priorities.

This is the sort of book that allows you to say to yourself, "Gosh, truth really is stranger than fiction." Or perhaps, "It really does take all sorts to make the world". Either way, one is stuck with cliches.

I've never been very good at word games - something I'm a bit disappointed about, really - but if being good at word games turns one into someone like any of these characters. Well, look, it is probably for the best.

If you have ever wondered just what it would be like to have a vocation... No, that is possibly too nasty. But reading this book is fascinating if only because it is remarkable what you can train your mind to do. These people play anagrams - where they will call out a series of letters (in alphabetical order) such as aceinnoorstv and seconds later someone will say, "conversation". (I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to even get that into alphabetical order and make sure I had all the letters there - terribly embarrassing). Needless to say, these people do that in their heads.

If you like paying a brief visit to a world that - well - most people would only ever really want to visit, and even then maybe from a distance - this book will do it for you. The guy who wrote this book did more than just visit - and in a sense he paid the price. As the guy who lent me this book told me, just reading it will make you a better Scrabble player. If that sounds like a noble outcome in your life then this is the book for you.

But even if you are not interested in being better at Scrabble for the characters alone this book really is required reading.

This is a fascinating documentary-style look into the subculture of elite Scrabble players, some of whom I will remember (and worry about) for a long time.

Fatsis also includes an interesting history of the game itself. Invented during the depression by an out of work architect named Alfred Butts, its popularity spread at first by word of mouth, until the orders got to be too much for Mr. Butts, who then turned it over to James Brunot, the man who chose the name Scrabble. (Alfred Butts had called it Criss Cross Words, obviously not as original or snazzy.) James Brunot struggled to make any money until the early 1950's, when a Macy's executive spied the game at a resort and was irritated to learn that he couldn't find it anywhere. When Macy's started carrying the game, it became a sensation, and James Brunot, who employed about three dozen people to churn out these sets in an old schoolhouse, gave up and turned the operation over to Selchow & Righter, a family-owned company that eventually sold it to Coleco. When Coleco went bankrupt, Hasbro bought the game and all their other assets. Scrabble went from being the jewel in the crown of Selchow & Righter to being a mere blip in the profits of humungous Hasbro.

The author also has much to relate on the history of the Scrabble players themselves--where the game caught on, the tournaments, the parks, and their eccentric, evolving rules. And the way they study! These players are mostly obsessive-compulsive geniuses who have come up with incredible insights into how to study anagrams, what collections of letters will yield the greatest number of bingos (or bingoes, better yet), and these lists are organized in ways that go beyond the imagination of most people.

Speaking of obsessive, I should mention that when Alfred Butts invented this game, he made a painstaking, laborious study of letter distribution. In the late 1920's, way before computers, we all know what this means: he counted each and every letter in a variety of books and periodicals. And evidently, he didn't go blind. Stefan Fatsis regards Butts as a hero.

While working on this book, Stefan Fatsis becomes a bit obsessed himself. That's another part of this story, how he almost goes native and captures some of these close encounters with the Scrabble world.

I highly recommend this, definitely a good read.

A few interesting parts about the history of Scrabble and games in general, but Fatsis as a person AND author is seriously off-putting. Only men warranted being profiled, and women were at various times referred to/dismissed as, "some little old lady," "middle-aged fat lady," and most often, "blue hairs." Also, you can only make Scrabble so exciting to read about. There came a point where I didn't care about word lists, bingos, and all the possible anagrams of a single word.

A journalistic memoir of one man's curious dive into the world of competitive Scrabble. If you've ever played Scrabble, this book is FASCINATING, and its exploration of the game itself is illuminating. It's not just about word knowledge: It's about tile placement, bluffing, focus, and the luck of the draw--and drugs and hotels and people living on the fringes wanting to be the best at at least one thing in life.

And the characters are certainly interesting.

As Fatsis gets sucked in more and more into this intense world, he gets to know the oddball competitors and the strategies behind the game. We learn about G.I. Joel, Marlon, Joel Wapnick, Joe Edley, and Brian Cappelletto. We learn about the interesting gender divide in the game, and how it has many more women than man, but how the top 100 list is dominated by men. We learn about the obsession that only comes with niche competition.

This book is kind of the King of Kong for Scrabble, so if you'd like to get sucked into a very specific world to learn more about its intricacies and characters, this book is a good bet.

An interesting idea for a story, and definitely some interesting tips for scrabble playing (although the tips are always tempered by the fact the play the "complete" game, you need to memorize the entire scrabble dictionary.) More to the point, though, the book was not particularly well-written or engaging. I would have been interested in reading the blow-by-blow winning tournament moves, but Fatsis relies waaaay too heavily on just listing words. Words that no one besides 10-20 professional scrabble players have ever heard of. I could forgive this the first few times, but time and time again, Fatsis relies on this story-telling technique. I don't want to go off on a rant about this, but I think it symbolizes the problem of his story construction. So, to summarize, a relatively interesting story, but inadequately told.

Word Freak was a fun, intriguing, and engaging exposition on the world of competitive Scrabble and the players. I enjoyed the Scrabble trivia, the history, and the interactions with the most famous players of the modern age the most. However, I did find parts of this book difficult to get through, especially the author's personal reflections, which at some points did get a little irritating. My overall favorite bits were the competitions, which were vividly described and exciting to read through. I felt myself cheering for certain players and getting disappointed if they lost just as if I were there.

This book is fairly well written, though I did find it to be a slower read. It covers a wide range of subjects within the world of Scrabble, all while following the author's personal journey through the ranks of the game. I found this setup, with both plot and exposition, to be enjoyable and easy to follow.

Anyone who's a fan of Scrabble, board games, or linguistics will likely enjoy this book. It's fun, educational, and engaging, so it fits a wide variety of interests and preferred styles. Definitely a good read, especially if you love words like I do!

So I picked up this book mainly because I really like to play Scrabble and I thought a non-fiction account of competitive Scrabble players might be interesting. Then, once I started reading I realized that competitive Scrabble players are definitely interesting but the game of competitive scrabble really is NOT. The story centers around Fatsis's quest to become a competitive Scrabble player and the motley crew of players he meets along the way. Those character studies are fascinating as he delves into their lives and their connections to the game. I also found the chapters discussing the history of the game and its founder to be very interesting too. The chapters that lost me were the ones that became SUPER technical about scoring and letters and words-- for a casual player like me I was completely lost. So this book is definitely one to pick up if you are fascinated by linguistics or just want to learn more about a niche subject. Besides that, I would just play the game more :)

I love playing Scrabble! It's a popular word game of skill and chance and journalist Stefan Fatsis entered the competitive world of Scrabble hoping for some material worthy of publishing. What he discovered was an intense sub culture with its own rules and guiding principles and a range of dedicated, intelligent and sometimes eccentric players all striving to win. Word Freak - Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis is the result of his research and complete immersion in the Scrabble scene.

First, it's important to know Scrabble can be played on a competitive level and the book largely takes place in the USA.

"To play competitive Scrabble, one has to get over the conceit of refusing to acknowledge certain words as real and accept that the game requires learning words that may not have any outside utility." Page 40

This is why competitive Scrabble doesn't appeal to me as a player. The author explains that vocabulary defines the better player in a living room situation, but in a competitive environment it's about mastering the rules of the game and memorising words. Two letter words are 'twos', three letter words 'threes' and so forth. Players keep track of tiles the way a card shark counts cards and there are endless strategies for discarding tiles, playing offensive and defensive and more.

Fatsis explains that players who compete at tournaments receive ranking points based on a very complicated system of wins and margins and are paired within divisions according to their latest ranking. A competitor will play multiple games at each tournament and Fatsis tells us just how hierarchical these tournaments are:

"In the playing room, you can't just sit wherever you fancy. The top-division tables typically are farthest from the main doors. And Table 1 of Division 1 - where the players with the best records meet in the latter stages of most tournaments - is usually in the farthest corner. The quality of play descends to the weakest novices in the room's opposite corner. And there isn't much interdivisional mingling. Experts have no interest in novice boards, and novices, who could benefit from learning new words or watching experts analyze positions, appear afraid to cross class boundaries." Page 37

In this way, the author quickly establishes the basics of competitive Scrabble and is glad to be warmly welcomed into the fold so to speak. Players knows he's a journalist from The Wall Street Journal and readily answer his questions while encouraging him to improve his game.

Many of the top players enjoy anagramming with each other in a playfully competitive nature and intellect is celebrated. Anagramming involves arranging tiles alphabetically on a rack - or saying them aloud - and identifying words made from the letters. This helps the players refine their skills and see the potential in the rack, and the majority of highly ranked players have created or implemented some kind of study program to learn and remember words.

There's quite a lot of content around the accepted dictionary of words, how it began and how it's updated etc.

"The Scrabble world decided that The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary [OSPD], first published in 1978, would for the purposes of the game, answer the question: What is a word?" Pages 40-41

But just to complicate things, there are two separate word sources that govern the game of Scrabble in North America and Great Britain.

"The new book is called the Official Tournament and Club Word List, and is known as the OWL." Page 41

I'd elaborate further but it gets quite confusing, suffice to say that Americans are at a significant disadvantage when playing overseas. Some embrace the additional words available to them, whilst others - predictably - refuse to change; essentially creating two camps. The deletion of offensive words caused a ruckus in the Scrabble community and several players who did a lot of work contributing to dictionary entries and study programs have been screwed over and distanced themselves from competitive play as a result.

There was even drama at the top level, with the dissolution of the National Scrabble Association (NSA) and the formation of the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA) in its place. Some players had various issues with the way NASPA was organising things and while many readers may find this overkill or boring, my interest - just - carried me through. It seems politics and drama exists everywhere.

It's unclear when exactly Fatsis becomes subsumed by Scrabble, but he quickly fixates on his rating, loses his temper when he doesn't play well and embarks on a range of study techniques, implementing tips from top players along the way.

Here's an example of some advice from Joe Edley that we can all learn from:

"Studying Scrabble words is like walking around the world, but as you start walking your feet start getting bigger. Every step you take is taking you farther. The more you study, the more ability you develop and the easier it becomes to learn more." Page 133

I'd say reading is the same! This is excellent advice and it can be applied to more than just Scrabble. Witnessing the author's improvement and progression through the rankings as he dedicated more and more time to it was satisfying. Often frustrating for the author himself, it was hard not to become invested in the nitty gritty details of specific plays gone wrong, missed opportunities, excellent plays and hard won victories.

Towards the end of the book, the author acknowledges that he's played more than a thousand games of Scrabble since embarking on his journey to write about the sub culture and it's taken him to unexpected places. I was surprised at the depth of relationships he developed over the course of the book, always rooming and carpooling with fellow players, regularly socialising outside of competitions and playing endless games in between.

Openly sharing their advice, strategies and study techniques, Fatsis also shared personal observations of their character, personality and lifestyle choices giving the reader quite an intimate view of some of the players. I often wondered whether he'd crossed the line and later learned in the Afterword that at least one player was unhappy about the way in which he was portrayed in the book.

Originally published in 2001, my new copy has an updated Preface and - cleverly titled - Afterwordfreak published in 2011. I particularly enjoyed reading updates on players who featured quite prominently in the book, and in a very meta way, the impact Word Freak had on new and upcoming players in the ten years it's been on shelves. The increase in technology and the emergence of new players who grew up playing bots online and using apps to improve their skills have now entered the fray. You'd assume the old-school players would feel threatened by them, but they seem to enjoy seeing new talent emerging and celebrate the successes of players decades younger than themselves.

While reading Word Freak I started playing the odd game of Scrabble online - against the computer - and found myself enjoying the game immensely and implementing many of the techniques outlined in this book. Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis was a terrific deep dive into the competitive world of Scrabble and I hope to watch the subsequent documentary Word Wars.