Rating: 
Summary: Great reading
Review: I am an enthusiastic home Scrabble player who has decided to join a club because of this book! Well written and thoroughly researched, some parts of this book are so funny that I've laughed out loud while reading it. I am amazed at how entertaining and informative it is, and I can't believe I just read a whole book about the world of Scrabble and that I couldn't put it down. If you've ever scored more than 200 points while playing at home, you should read this book. But beware: you may become a word freak yourself.
Rating:
Summary: What it takes to be an expert
Review: This is a great book about what it takes to be an expert, in a domain that most of us are familiar with. But I doubt any of us casual Scrabble players had any idea of what it takes to become a top flight tournament player. Late in the book Fatsis compares the growth of expertise in Scrabble with the well-known cognitive science work on expertise in other domains like chess, and he is right on the mark. It takes prolonged "deliberate practice", that is, practice with great attention to the process by which various moves succeed or fail. Those of us who play for fun with whatever words we know from our ordinary experience do not progress toward expertise. It takes hard work, as illustrated by all the examples Fatsis gives in his splendid portraits of top players. To his credit, Fatsis himself moves very quickly to the lower rungs of the expert level, but he works his tail off to do it. I have for years used chess, music, and math examples of expertise in my classes on cognitive psychology, and I am delighted to now be armed with this rich, incredibly interesting material to use in future teaching. And yes, Fatsis writes with a narrative flair that keeps you up late at night reading the next episode. All in all, a wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: Who Would Have Thought...
Review: Who would have thought that a book about Scrabble ratings, letter values, and point scores would be absoutely impossible to put down--except to play a game of Scrabble. Stefan Fatsis writes about the competitive Scrabble world with a narrative pull that is engaging and fascinating. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end (I even wanted to read, and did, the Appendix, Sources, and Acknowledgments). When I saw photos on the National Scrabble Association's website of some recent tournament winners I felt a thrill at seeing their faces because I felt I knew them. Whether you play Scrabble now or did in the past or have never played, read this book. You don't have to be a word freak to love it, but you might want to become one after finishing it. Thanks Stefan Fatsis for opening up yourself with such honesty and for showing a world most people would otherwise never know.
Rating:
Summary: Among the most gripping autobiographical books I've read
Review: Stefan Fatsis's story of his rise to SCRABBLE expertdom is surprisingly novelistic. He skilfully intertwines his own tale with the development of the characters of several expert players who "mentor" him along the way, and throws in interesting asides from the history of the game and of competitive play. As the story progresses, some of these characters turn out to be so bizarre as to make it hard to believe this is non-fiction.As a devoted competitive SCRABBLE player myself, but new to "the scene", I loved learning about the growth of this subculture. Stefan's telic series of tournament appearances and study programs was a delight to learn about. The average, not-quite-devoted player may find some of the detail boresome. But never fear, just when the arcana seem about to overwhelm, Stefan switches to stories about yet another quirky SCRABBLE expert. To top it all, there is a wonderfully climactic SCRABBLE moment near the end which made me want to literally applaud. I won't say more about this, and will let you discover it for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: FASCINATING
Review: Well written, dramatic, psychologically insightful and sophisticated, a great joy whether you play Scrabble or not, because we all use and live and think with words. Explores memory, competition, obsession, the thrill of victory, loss and luck! The political/social process by which "bad" words were purged from the official lists in 1993 is also quite fascinating, as is the history of the development and corporate ownership of the game. (I'm still mad at Hasbro for switching off the "Email Scrabble" server) Fatsis' personal struggle to get to an expert level in Scrabble told with candor and wit....and his achievement of a 1700 rating is remarkable!
Rating: 
Summary: Dysfunction Junction
Review: My tendency is to be an obsessive game player. While in college, I played ping-pong five hours a day, seven days a week. At night I would play chess and Scrabble. I was never a great game board player, but I was good enough and fast enough that the hustlers who hung out at the Olive Tree Cafe in Greenwhich Village would play me without making me play for money. I gave up games for many years after hanging out at the Olive Tree. I was frightened about how easily I fit in with some of the most intelligent people I've ever met, who lived on the fringe of society. I did not want to become one of them. "Word Freak" captures the essence of, not only Scrabble Players, but of obsessive game players in general. While the book is ostensibly about Scrabble, the personality traits of the players I've met who were experts in different games, are interchangeable with those Fatsis so aptly portrays. For me this book validates my decision not to get hooked by games again. So why, while reading it, I joined the National Scrabble Association, is beyond me. I guess I got the bug, again.
Rating:
Summary: anti-bluehair manifesto
Review: Although the book is truly engrossing, informative, and well written, I must point out that Fatsis' characterizations of women scrabble players lean toward misogyny, when he deigns to include them at all in his narrative. Yes, there are 2 women ranked in the top 50 scrabble players. And, he devotes a whole 3 pages or so to 3 of the top women players. Plus, he deals with the gender disparities in a surface manner. I hoped for more analysis than he gave (women have lives and don't devote the time or energy to memorizing words; women think about playing scrabble while they're at a tournament but otherwise it doesn't enter their thoughts on a regular basis; women lack the drive, the testosterone for tournament playing). Honestly, it was hard to empathize with those bizarre men. I don't think that his contempt for blue-hairs is an ageism thing, for he frequently extols the prowess of the octogenarian male player, while scorning the legions of blue-hairs that comprise the lower levels of play. Curiously enough, he doesn't go into great detail about what it is exactly that revolts him about blue-hairs. He characterizes women negatively by noting the way they chirp and bang the clock (as if only men are allowed to do this). Or the way they mother him when they try to comfort him once he's made an obvious mistake. Again, it is a brilliant book, but perhaps the genre can benefit from a female perspective or at least an exposé more gender neutral, giving equal time to all players.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating in all but detail
Review: This is a charming and strangely compassionate book considering its subject matter. In a way, it is more like two books. On the one hand, it is the story of his personal endeavour to climb the ranking in competitive scrabble, and on the other it is a journalist's attempt to understand both the fascination and phenomenon of competitive scrabble itself. Thus, we get both breathless accounts of his competitions (and those of the experts he befriends) and tours of scrabble factories, historical sketches of the games development, and so on. Somewhere in between the personal narrative and discharging his responsibilities as a journalist Fatsis writes something of a handbook on how to become a scrabble player. These sections are long and often detailed. He is impressed by anagramming (which is to scrabble what skating is to hockey), and gives detailed account of how collections of letters can be turned in many words you have never heard of. Scrabble is least fun when your opponent plunks down a word you have never heard of because it seems a bit like cheating. Did you know that 'sh' is a word? 'ug'? 'op'? 'hm' -- these should help in your next game, but personally I found the detail overwhelming at times, and found myself skimming through the technical sections to get to the bits where he competes. But it isn't all action. Along the way, he portrays a great number (perhaps too many) of the characters he meets in the tournaments he plays. These are a pretty odd collection of people, but Fatsis, to his credit, is never condescending and retains a personal warmth that keeps his story human. That scrabble great Joel Sherman felt comfortable with the book is a sign that Fatsis didn't violate the trust of his subjects, but the book is hardly a soft touch. These people often have real problems, and Fatsis neither sugar coats his account nor apologizes for their behaviour. It is, in this sense, a honest and worthy book. Despite this, getting through the technical sections often feels unrewarding and in retrospect I have somehow found myself thinking that equations like J=8 or K=5 are as immutable as any laws of nature. Skipping through these sections is worth it, because the story and the obession and quite interesting. In this respect, Fatsis book reminds me somewhat of Susan Orleans excellent The Orchid Thief, a similar tale of a subculture based on mutual passions.
Rating:
Summary: A bingo through two triples
Review: The author not only documents the bizarre world of competitive Scrabble, he also is seduced by and joins it. As fascinating as a look into any obsession, but a little more so, since it's something with which most of us are familiar at the dilettante level--as was the author before he took the plunge. Riveting.
Rating:
Summary: Is it love or obsession? Who cares?
Review: Years ago at a friendly kitchen table game of Scrabble my dad excitedly mentioned that they have tournaments for this sort of thing. I thought he was nuts, but a few months later he had won his first tournament in the fifth division at New Albany. When he showed off his winnings, one (frankly goofy) mug, I knew it was all down hill. I watched with a bemused and frightened kind of admiration as he flew cross-country to play in tournaments and memorized world list after word list and his ranking improved. He'd come to visit and tell stories of racks, plays, opponents, wins and losses. None of which I really understood or cared about. But I nodded encouragingly like any good daughter ought to. When my friends talked about how dorky their fathers were, all I had to do was mention my dad plays Scrabble competively and is really pretty good at it. They resigned to my dorky dominance. I always realized my dad was part of some bizzare sunculture, but Word Freak made a few things clear: 1. My dad is execptionally normal in the grand scheme of Scrabble things. 2. He is nowhere near alone. 3. The subculture is much more bizzare and much more developed than I ever knew. I don't read nonfiction, but I felt obliged to read this and I really, really liked it. These characters--these (real) people--are unbelievable and yet believably real. Fatsis does an amazing job of not only presenting them as real (obessed) players, but explaining the profile of a competitive games player. He even makes the history of Scrabble interesting. (How that's possible is beyond me.) It's chracter-driven, entertaining and well written. In short, I loved it.
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