Word Freak (World of Competitive Scrabble Players) (Stefan Fatsis, 2001)

The author occasionally wrote for the the Wall Street Journal, which is where I saw a review of this book. I was interested because we play Scrabble around here occasionally - mostly Patrick, Nicole and Patricia, me occasionally. But I tend to slow down the games.

Anyway, the book was interesting, but not really worth reading all the way through. So I was skimming chunks. The world of competitive Scrabble is sort of an adults version of the spelling bee world. It seems like most of the world class players are pretty weird, or maybe the author just played up that aspect.

It was a bit depressing - almost to the point of making you want to swear off the game - to read descriptions of strategy, rack configurations, and the words these folks can find. Whatever they're doing, it bears little resemblance to the game I play.