Word Freak
by Stefan Fatsis · first published 2001
64% recommend27% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
Nonfiction look inside competitive Scrabble, its tournament players and their lifestyles. Well written and hard to put down, it suits readers curious about the subculture even without an interest in the game.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Stefan Fatsis, a Wall Street Journal reporter and National Public Radio regular, recounts his remarkable rise through the ranks of elite Scrabble players while exploring the game's strange, potent hold over them -- and him. Scrabble might truly be called America's game. More than two million sets are sold every year and at least thirty million American homes have one. But the game's most talented competitors inhabit a sphere far removed from the masses of "living room players."
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Stefan Fatsis' book Word Freak is a must-read for anyone that wants to get an inside view into the characters and lifestyle of tournament Scrabble: http://www.amazon.com/Word-Freak-Heartbreak-Obsession-Compet... Beware, though, lots…
on “A French Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French” ↗I can’t program but for awhile I wrote for a living. I was an English major in college and got hooked on Scrabble after reading Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, a sportswriter from The Wall Street Journal. I’d always been into gambling and games with a luck factor like poker, backgammon, cribbage, etc., so that might have something to do with…
on “Wordle is pretty damn smart in many subtle ways” ↗…him and knows his uncanny word knowledge and Scrabble abilities. And if anyone's interested in reading about the Scrabble tournament scene and the associated lifestyles, check out Stefan Fatsis' book "Word Freak"[3], probably the best Scrabble book ever written (although it does contain quite a few f-words, thanks to the colorful personalities that it describes, which I wasn't crazy about). [1] http://www.isc.ro/…
on “A French Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French” ↗Word Freak (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Word-Freak-Eccentric-Heartbreak-Comp...) the book that preceded the film is also a similarly fascinating read.
on “The Story of Scrabble” ↗If you're interested in the history and the weird world of competitive scrabble I highly recommend Stefan Fatsis' book "Word Freak", as well as the documentary film "Word Wards" (2004) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Wars
on “How Scrabble Blew Its Big Moment” ↗I recommend "Word Freak" by Stefan Fatsis if you're looking for a non-fiction novel about the world of competitive Scrabble. It's one of the most entertaining and well-written books I've ever read. Almost impossible to put down…
on “Scrabble's Best Player Knows No Limits” ↗…rather than math. But in the strictest sense, statistics is more important than linguistics. It just doesn't really matter because memorization is so much more important than both of them. The book Word Freak was pretty good and as far as I can tell, accurate.
on “A French Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French” ↗I recommend the book mentioned in the aeticle, Word Freak by Fatis. Entertaining even for me hardly interested in Scrabble. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Freak
on “The insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast” ↗In a book release event for Stefan Fatsis's book on tournament Scrabble players, Word Freak, the host posed the "megachiropteran" anagram as a trivia question for a book giveaway. One of the top players in my club _instantly_ replied "cinematographer," and added, "but megachiropteran isn't…
on “I found the best anagram in English (2017)” ↗SI has been writing about Scrabble since forever. It was a seminal 90s SI article that inspired the Word Freak writer (Stefan Fatsis) to write this book in the early 2000s (and give our community a brief, at the time highly promising, boost).
on “How Scrabble Blew Its Big Moment” ↗Thanks for posting. I've been a user of the Internet Scrabble Club for over 15 years now. I came to it after learning of competitive scrabble from reading Word Freak by Stephan Fatsis [1]. I had a background playing internet chess. I started with yahoo and gravitated towards lightning (1/0 time controls). I think there's more than a grain of truth to the quotation,…
on “Scrabble, Anonymous” ↗…play Scrabble daily and got pretty good. Memorized all of the two letter words, memorized a good number of the three letter words and thought about playing in a tournament. Then someone gave me the book Word Freak and I lost any interest in playing in a tournament. The people that win Scrabble tournaments memorize dictionaries as their full-time job hoping to make $20,000 in tournament prize money per year. I can't…
on “Becoming a Chess Grandmaster” ↗The article certainly doesn't sound like he has dedicated his life to professional play Read the book "Word Freak" and you'll read all about the people that win Scrabble tournaments. It's really sad.
on “Nigel Richards, The Best Scrabble Player” ↗