Word Wars

After watching Wordplay I added a few different puzzle-competition type documentaries to my Netflix queue. Word Wars, which documents the National Scrabble Championship of 2002, is the first one I've felt compelled to say anything about. It's worth watching, if only by virtue of its odd cast of characters. If one is to judge by these contestants, Scrabble players are the black sheep of the puzzle family -- they seem more bloodthirsty, more compulsive (two of the contestants seem to enjoy taking each others' money more than anything else), and certainly more dysfunctional than their pencil-wielding brethren.

The film is less compelling than Wordplay, mostly because it is only about the contestants. New crossword puzzles are created every day, but each game of Scrabble begins from the same blank board and a few randomly selected tiles, so the movie can't squeeze any fun out of the game's origins. There is no father figure like the affable Will Shortz presiding over the world of Scrabble, and there seems precious little mirth or wit involved in the game. In some ways, Scrabble is the exact opposite of a crossword puzzle -- because it is merely about letter arrangement, divorced entirely from the meanings of the words, it reduces the necessary language skills to rote memorization and probability calculation. As one of the contestants remarks, there are few English Lit professors in the tournament, but mathematicians abound.

So what we're left with are the competitors. The reigning champion comes off as an incurable bore, ripe for the unseating. His challengers seem a bit unsavory but entertainingly scrappy, and each gives the impression (often stated by their on-screen friends and loved ones) that if only he would apply his dedication to Scrabble in some other area of life, he might actually make something of himself. Word Wars is a delicious bit of schadenfreude that will almost certainly make you feel better about your own life, but not recommended for repeat viewing.

Find Word Wars at Amazon. And believe it or not, there's another Scrabble doc called Scrabylon.