Word Freak and The Ultimate Guide to Winning Scrabble

By MARGIE THOMSON

Stefan Fatsis: Word Freak (Yellow Jersey Press $49.95)

Derryn Hinch: The Ultimate Guide to Winning Scrabble (Random House $29.95)

Is obsession a form of insanity? There is plenty of evidence in Fatsis' hilarious account of the bizarre, misfit-ridden world of competitive Scrabble to suggest that those who marshal the "weird hidden forces of the mind" are not quite like other people.

Fatsis, a sports journalist with the Wall Street Journal (presumably it is he who, in geeky cogitation, graces the cover of this book), began as a lounge player and made it all the way up to first division. "I'm having trouble typing these words, but right now Scrabble is the most important thing in my life," he confesses at one point.

He covers the history of the game, and spends hundreds of hours befriending and interviewing some of the mainstays and stars of this peculiar underworld, exploring their obsession, and learning much about memory, probability and linguistics along the way.

There are many word guides available for Scrabble players, but Hinch's one is very accessible, and contains interesting chapters on the history of the game, including an account of how he met the game's inventor, Alfred Mosher Butts.

The word lists are intimidating, but Fatsis' book will help you strategise your learning of them. Both will be good additions to the bach library this summer.