Competition stories

Word Wars

Just as Spellbound made the spelling bee cool, Word Wars lifts the invisible world of championship Scrabble into the spotlight. But rather than cute kids, the champs of Scrabble are lone guys without jobs or relationships. They are misfits who neurotically memorize words, and word orders. Their competition is less the joy of winning and more a compulsion. The joy of this film, then, is less the drama of who will win, and more the pleasures of following an odd obsession to see where it takes us. We go deep into a subculture, one of many hidden from the mainstream, and discover strange guys who find the meaning of life in the order of words.

-- KK

Word Wars: Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Game Circuit
Directed by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo
2004, 81 min.

Available from Amazon

Rentable from Netflix

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