Nope.
Word Freak, with its ridiculously long sub-title; "Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players" is by Stefan Fatsis, the writer and author who you sometimes hear on NPR, talking about sports. It looks like Fatsis went looking into the world of competitive Scrabble, to get a better idea of the strange world he only saw glimpses of in pick-up games in the park, played by sketchy-looking folks with time clocks--a la chess.
After digging into this weird, obsessive, sub-culture, Fatsis found himself losing his objectivity. Yeah, he went down the rabbit hole.
Now I guess Fatsis would say that he never lost his objectivity, and I guess that's probably sort of true, but if he was there originally to simply report on competitive Scrabble as an interesting sub-culture, somewhat related to sports do sports writers report on chess and crap like that? then I think changing that intent, or allowing it to evolve, into more of a spectator/autobiographical story, has a little taint of rationalizing after your project has gone off the rails. Fatsis makes no bones about the fact that he pretty quickly became obsessed with the game, and is now, incidentally, one of the higher ranked competitive Scabble players in America.
Word Freak* traces Fatsis's trip down the rabbit hole, his struggles with the game, the obsessive studying of words and anagramming, and perhaps most interesting, is the history of Scrabble, and the personalities of the people who play competitively. It was an interesting romp.
* Hasbro, the new-ish Owner of Scrabble in the U.S. wouldn't allow the use of their trademarked board game in the title of Fatsis's book.
