Stefan Fatsis is a sports reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a regular contributor to NPR's All Things Considered.
His first book, Wild and Outside, is about minor-league baseball in the Midwest.
Review
"Fatsis . . . writes with affectionate zeal about the game and the fraternity of brilliant, lonely, and
otherwise dysfunctional oddballs it attracts."
--The New York Times
"Word Freak has an impassioned subtitle, and it lives up to every word."
--People
Publisher's Web Site, June, 2003
Summary
Scrabble may be truly called America's game. But for every group of "living-room players" there is
someone who is "at one with the board." In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis introduces readers to those
few, exploring the underground world of colorful characters for which the Scrabble game is life-playing competitively
in tournaments across the country. It is also the story of how the Scrabble game was invented by an unemployed
architect during the Great Depression and how it has grown into the hugely successful, challenging, and beloved
game it is today. Along the way, Fatsis chronicles his own obsession with the game and his development as a player
from novice to expert. More than a book about hardcore Scrabble players, Word Freak is also an examination
of notions of brilliance, memory, language, competition, and the mind that celebrates the uncanny creative powers
in us all.
