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Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers | 
 enlarge | Author: Stefan Fatsis
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  104 reviews
Sales Rank: 82311
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0142002267
Dewey Decimal Number: 794
EAN: 9780142002261
ASIN: 0142002267
Publication Date: July 30, 2002
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Amazon.com
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. 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 favorite word game. He 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 memorizing lists of words. For anybody who is interested in words, Word Freak provides an entertaining and absorbing read. --Dwight Longenecker, Amazon.co.uk
Product Description
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.
"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)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 99 more reviews...
 Clumsy Bad Writing -- Good Vocabulary Though August 11, 2008
In choosing to write about the misfits, neurotics, and obsessives who call themselves Scrabble players Stefan Fatsis could have chosen one of two approaches. He could have for one year followed North America's best players as they trained for and played in the National championships -- the result would have been a screwball comedy. Or he could have focused on why he -- an ostensibly successful Wall Street Journal reporter -- would himself become as obsessed with the game as the unemployed geniuses that constitute the core of the Scrabble elite -- the result would have also been a screwball comedy. Instead Mr. Fatsis chooses the middling path, and focuses on how he as an amateur tried to make it as an elite Scrabble player -- the result is interesting but is the furthest away from a screwball comedy -- it's about a serious man with a serious mission to master a serious game.
That's the most frustrating thing about reading "Word Freak." It should be funny and entertaining, light and ironic -- but it takes itself and the game too seriously. That's because when writing the book Stefan Fatsis the journalist cannot separate himself from Stefan Fatsis the Scrabble player -- and the book becomes bogged down by detail, trivia, and minutaie that only Scrabble players care about. Fortunately for Fatsis there just happens to be millions of Scrabble players out there.
For these Scrabble lovers Fatsis offers sound advice and analysis on playing the game, and shows well the stress and pressures of competitive Scrabble. And Fatsis does a decent job on writing about the history of Scrabble. He has a chapter on the solitary genius Alfred Butts who invented the game, and even a chapter on Scrabble's corporate history.
Even though it's useful and highly marketable "Word Freak" is nonetheless written by a very pedestrian and inexperienced writer. The book is much too long, badly organized, and the diction is just terrible. Instead of gliding across the page the reader stumbles through it, sometimes tripping over the clunky words that Stefan Fatsis has intentionally placed there to show off his vocabulary.
The book feels like a rushed piece of work, and not at all edited. It felt as though when writing the book Fatsis was on a 25 minute timer, and it didn't matter if the chapters and paragraphs he created made any sense he just had to get it done under 25 minutes, and if he did he would win. And judging by the sales of this book he had indeed won.
 Cool book on the scrabble sub-culture July 10, 2008
A friend recommended this one to me. Not a topic that I ever even knew existed - professional scrabble! But this is a fascinating subculture populated by lovable misfits -- the introverted nebbish Joel from New York, the hip Marlon, who comes from one of the poorest black neighborhoods in America, but scrapes by on his earnings from his totally ingenious mastery of a word game most of us know only as a casual past-time. Fatsis writes with genuine affection for his subject - despite using the term "freak" in his title - and he is a really good guide to the intricacies of the game, which, when played at a really high level is far more complicated than I ever could have imagined. He also gives an excellent overview of the history of the game itself - its invention, its commercialization, its growth as a kind of American icon among board games. I can't say how glad I am that I read this book. It's a joy...even if the topic is a bit unusual. Highly, highly recommend.
Another world June 9, 2008
My advice:
1. Consider the title/subjectmatter of WF. If you're not curious, take a pass.
2. If you are curious, read the first chapter. If
2.a. You're not totally (I do mean totally) sucked in, take a pass on the rest
2.b. You're totally (ditto) sucked in, read on.
My guess is that all of the middling/negative reviews on this page were posted by disgrunted 1- or 2a-readers who should have hit the eject-button early on; all of the praising reviews from us 2b-ers, contentedly strapped in for the ride. With all due respect to 1- and 2a-ers -- and with no aim to convert them from their 1/2a-ish ways (many of them have my sympathies, in fact) -- I'll just say that I'm squarely in the 2b camp. I thought WF was terrific, soup to nuts. I loved every character study, every competition, every lead-up to the next competition, every bout of authorly self-doubt, every instance of authorly self-satisfaction. Fatsis does a brilliant job of capturing -- and, indeed, being captured within -- an exceedingly odd subculture at the crossroads of game- and math-geekdom, on the wire (often literally) between sanity and insanity.
Fatsis writes about Scrabble-mania with a true insider's knowledge, and with a deep affection for both his subjectmatter and his subjects. The result is a greatly engaging, at times inspiring, often humorous, occasionally pathetic glimpse into a slice of life few of us can imagine, but one we must on some level respect.
WF is an odd and entertaining bit of social history. A wonderful read!
A Small Problem January 7, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am actually in the process of returning this product because the first five chapters were put in the book upside down and backwards. It wouldn't be too much of a problem but the pages were cut incorrectly and the first three or so sentences are missing from the top of each page.
 A window on obsession - what you see through that window tells a lot about one's self October 7, 2007
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Fluff or not? Not
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---- Comments ----
Annoying and weird, funny, loveable, eccentric, talented, and driven - the multitude of players Fastis helps us get do know display all of these characteristics and many more. There's gobs of interesting scrabble history, trivia, strategy, and tournament play-by-play but what this book was really about for me was obsession: it was about how obsession grows, how it manifests differently in different people but, more importantly, how it can happen to anyone. Obsession is something with which I can identify. Whether you're a Scrabble player or not doesn't matter for there's so much in here about being human, about mechanisms for survival, for determining self worth, and for simply having fun that you won't be able to put it down - prone to obsession or not.
---- What I liked ----
The nuts and bolts shared about the game and strategy, the idiosyncrasies of the main players, and the personal details the author shared about his scrabble journey and the relationships he developed with some of the other main characters.
---- What I didn't ----
Well, now I'm hooked on Scrabble
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