Word Freak: A Journey Into The Eccentice World Of The Most Obsessive
Board Game Ever Invented

Product Description

' Within two pages I was hooked' Daily Telegraph'A quirky account of a very peculiar practice' Glasgow Herald For many, Scrabble is merely a board game. For others it is an intellectual pilgrimage, a balancing act between language & mathematics, simultaneously joyful & frustrating. In Word Freak Stefan Fatsis charts the history & theory of the game alongside his own rise from living-room player to competitive shark, & affords us a glimpse into the extraordinary world of the brilliant geeks & 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 & petty jealousies; schadenfreude 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 & probability, as well as those players who form Scrabble's darker underworld. Witty & profound, Word Freak is about sports & competition, the human mind & its interior workings, drive, desire & loneliness. & huge lists of words with no meaning at all. 'A very funny book' Lynn Barber