Fatsis' NSC Blog

Stefan Fatsis is a bit of a celebrity in the Scrabble world. He wrote Word Freak, a book which many people admit (including me) drew them into the world of competitive Scrabble playing.

Stefan is back playing in this year's NSC. I guess he even got to write it off as a business trip, because he's keeping a blog about his experiences on the Wall Street Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

I started playing competitively eight years ago, and played in the Nationals in 1998, 2000 and 2002, during and after I researched and wrote a book, "Word Freak," about the Scrabble subculture. At the risk of immodesty, I'll say that in this little world, I pass for celebrity. Here in Reno, people stop me in the tournament room to say they started playing after reading the book. One of my offspring, an MIT undergrad named Jason Katz-Brown, is already a top expert with astounding "word knowledge," the product of hundreds of hours of memorization and study. I'm sometimes not sure whether to thank the well-wishers or to apologize for helping turn them into addicts. Especially when I experience again what the game can do.

At my peak, I studied words an hour or two a day and played upwards of 20 games of Scrabble a week. My devotion was thorough. I inched my way up the ladder. Scrabble players are rated according to performance, via a formula also used in chess. The lowest rating is about 500. The top players breach 2000. At my peak, I was rated 1733, or about 180th of 2,000 or so active players in North America. It was enough to make me an expert.

No more. I play and study less now. So my rating has steadily dropped, relegating me to the third division in Reno. In my book, I took some flack for calling the lower groupings the "blue-hair" divisions, because they are populated by older women who can whip any living-room player but aren't interested in Scrabble superstardom. Now I joke that I'm living my book in reverse, returning from whence I came. "Word Freak II: Revenge of the Blue-Hairs." Ha ha.

Stefan has since won a few games and is placing respectably in Division III: 31 of 135 as of Round 21.