Word Freak: A Journey into the Eccentric World of the Most Obsessive Board Game Ever Invented

For many, Scrabble is merely a board game. For others it is an intellectual pilgrimage, a balancing act between language and mathematics, simultaneously joyful and frustrating. In Word Freak Stefan Fatsis charts the history and theory of the game alongside his own rise from livingroom player to competitive shark, and affords us a glimpse into the extraordinary world of the brilliant geeks and misfit savants who populate the highest ranks of the game. The top Scrabble players marshal the weird, hidden forces of the mind in their quest for greatness; they form cliques and petty jealousies; schadenfraude is a popular sensation; their favourite noise is that of a shaking bag of small tiles. In an effort to understand the depth of obsession plumbed by the players, Fatsis meets experts in neurochemistry, memory, linguistics and probability, as well as those players who form Scrabble's darker underworld. Witty and profound, Word Freak is about sports and competition, the human mind and its interior workings, drive, desire and loneliness. And huge lists of words with no meaning at all.

Stefan Fatsis is 36 and a sports journalist for the Wall Street Journal. A native of New York, he has worked as a reporter since the age of 17.