The wacky world of competitive Scrabble

Word Freak

by Stefan Fatsis

One of my husband's family's Thanksgiving traditions, after the obligatory gorging, is to clear off a table and start a Scrabble game.

I can hold my own, but I'm seldom the grand winner. Maybe someday I'll remember to look up some more words that use the letters J,Q, and X so I don't get stuck with them at the end.

Imagine my surprise a few years ago when I came across the book "Word Freak." The tag line on the cover reads "Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players."

"Competitive Scrabble?!" I said to myself. I picked up the book and paged through it, and before long I knew I had to read this.

There's a whole Scrabble subculture out there -- people who obsessively play the game and memorize wordlists, traveling around the country to compete in tournaments.

Fatsis begins his journey through the Scrabble world as an unranked amateur, but joins in tournaments as part of his "research."

If you're the type who can create words like "DYSTOCIA" and "KNURS" on the board, this books is for you. (And if you're curious "Dystocia" means "difficult or abnormally painful childbirth, and "Knurs" is a "knot on the trunk of a tree."

Find this book on the 2nd floor, 793.734 FAT.

c Waterloo Public Library 2007

You had to be brave to be a settler

That Dark and Bloody River
by Allan W. Eckert.

Most of us today really have no understanding of what our ancestors went through to settle this country, nor do we ever really think about what white settlement patterns did to the Native American societies already living here.

The Shawnee, Mingo, Miamis, and Wyandot tribes, among others, were long-established in the Ohio River Valley. Villages were often found at the junctures of the Ohio and its numerous tributaries, and room was made for tribes, such as the Delawares, who were pushed west as European settlers took over their former lands in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

These tribes, used to dealing honorably, if not always peacefully, with one another were put under tremendous stress in dealing with the incoming settlers, most of whom didn't understand the Indians, and thought they were savages. Given the disgusting behavior of some of the settlers, that was the pot calling the kettle black.

The British, and later the United States government proved to be incapable of controlling the movements of their citizens, who consistently broke treaties that were made with the tribes. Although they tried for a time to live in peace with the incoming whites, the tribes eventually came to believe that they had to take a military stand and enforce the treaty boundaries.

They began to attack those who settled in their lands in violation of the treaties, and the relatively gruesome methods they used in these attacks terrified the white settlers. Soon the two groups were openly at war.

The British encouraged the fighting between the two groups, especially during and just after the Revolutionary War. They sent arms, ammunition and other supplies to the tribes to encourage them to continue fighting, hoping to weaken the newly-founded United States.

For an illuminating look at the struggles faced by both groups, I highly recommend this book. You can find it in the Non-fiction stacks on the 2nd floor, under 977 ECK.

c Waterloo Public Library 2007