Word Nerd - Dispatches from the Games, Grammar, and Geek Underground

Beginning his career on a lark as a freelance contributor to SCRABBLE(r) News, John D. Williams Jr. fell down a rabbit hole inhabited by gamers, geeks, and the grammar police. Having served as executive director of the National SCRABBLE(r) Association for twenty-five years, Williams now takes readers inside the byzantine, dog-eat-dog world of top tournament players, creating a piquant (sevenletter word, 68 points!) work that is part pop-cultural history, part anthropological fieldwork. Whether reminiscing about past national champions (the highest recorded SCRABBLE(r) score is 830), helpfully providing a list of offensive words once banned from SCRABBLE(r), opining on the number of vowelless words that are allowable (cmw for Welsh deep-walled basin, or nth for the ultimate degree), noting how long it takes a word to get into the SCRABBLE(r) dictionary, or why there remain more male than female champions, Williams has created a memorable work that will fascinate both amateurs and seasoned experts al