mycouponz's Full Review: Stefan Fatsis - Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, G...
Stephan Fatsis' book provides some insight into the competitive world of Scrabble. A relative newbie to the game when he starts to write it, Fatsis arguably can be called an expert by the time he finishes.
A good portion of the book details his experiences in learning the game and improving his skill set. As with most newcomers to the National Scrabble Association tournament scene, he starts by learning the acceptable two and three-letter words, and eventually progresses to the high-probability stems and beyond. For example, a 6 letter stem would be SATINE. With these tiles, you can learn all the letters that can be added to them to form a bingo(a 7+ letter word), and then come up with a mnemonic. The mnemonic is usually something easy to remember, such as "Choo Choo stops, I get off". This would help you remember that if you add a G to SATINE, you can form SEATING, TEASING, EATINGS, INGESTA, INGATES and EASTING.
Fatsis travels around the US and beyond providing commentary on his own play and that of his competition. He soon discovers that it's more than just a game, as studying words becomes an obsession. The book culminates in the author detailing the results of a World Scrabble Championship, an event that brings together some of the best players from a number of scrabble-crazy countries.
Fatsis profiles a few of the elite players in the scrabble scene. Although they may be successful with Scrabble, most have been unable or unwilling to secure long term employment.
Word Freak also chronicles the history of the popular game. From the invention by one Alfred Butts to the various companies that have bought and sold the rights to the game. He also talks about one of the low moments in the game's history, when Hasbro decided to ban derogatory/offensive terms. Thankfully, that didn't last and the current scrabble dictionaries, which come out every few years, update the game in accordance with a few selected general-use dictionaries. While it might be a simple game, it's played differently all over the world. Outside of North America, they use the SOWPODS dictionary which has hundreds if not thousands more words than the N.A. dictionary.
Despite the game's success over the years, it's still not given the respect it deserves. Hasbro clearly has a lot more popular products on its hands, so I suppose I can't blame them. Having said that, it doesn't look like the Scrabble scene is going to collapse any time soon.
Being an avid Scrabble player myself, I enjoyed reading how Fatsis picked up the game and became good very quickly. In fact, after three years of playing, he could be considered an expert player by today's standards. Fatsis goes to great lengths to detail how the game came about to be, and while I found some of it interesting, it became a bit of a chore in one or two chapters to read how the game was refined over time. I also enjoyed reading about some of the personalities in the game, but outside of their scrabble successes and failures, Fatsis doesn't tell us too much about them.
If you're looking for something to kick back and enjoy - especially if you love words - I think you'd like Word Freak. It's an easy read, and one that can probably be read over a long weekend, at just under 400 pages.
Fatsis book was the inspiration for a documentary called Word Wars that is now on DVD, which I would also highly recommend.
If you'd like more information about the game, or to find a club near you, http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/
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Fatsis introduces readers to the underground world of colorful characters for which the Scrabble game is life--playing competitively in tournaments ac...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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