11/05/24
August 18, 2004
A glorious, almost completely self-contained, gleeful dork fest of the first order. It's the kind of community Christopher Guest could make a movie out of. I'd see that movie.
posted by chicobangs at 10:39 AM on August 18, 2004
It's not a sport. It's a game. And this comes from a guy who LOVES the game. "Word Freak" is good? I saw it on the bargain shelf at a book store and almost grabbed it. I think I'll look for it again.
posted by grum@work at 10:49 AM on August 18, 2004
I know this guy. He's a total machine. Once, some friends and I were hanging out, and I had earlier that day looked up clever anagrams for some of my other friends' names on the internet. I started reciting the anagrams, and he'd tell me the name that it came from. And these were people he hadn't met. Total dorkfest.
posted by rocketman at 10:53 AM on August 18, 2004
He's a newbie, right, rocketman? But he beat the shit out of Joel Elkins?! So yes, I have read Word Freak. Absolutely loved it. The movie, entitled Word Wars, is supposed to be great as well (and I believe Fastis is in it). But yeah, not a sport, not athletes. Just eccentric obsessed folks. If I had the right mind, I'd totally do it too.
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:17 AM on August 18, 2004
grum, "Word Freak" was great... If you'd like my copy, let me know and I'll mail it. If you can get it at a bargain, that'd probably work better, but my email is in my profile as needed. And Scrabble is a dorkfest of the highest magnitude.
posted by 86 at 11:19 AM on August 18, 2004
Not a sport, but not for a lack of competitiveness. And the eye-hand coordination needed to play shouldn't be easily discounted. Getting the little tiles to go down straight is hard, and then you bump one and all the words shift and then you have to methodically put them all back again; it's really annoying. And for the record - Spofi is a bit of a dorkfest, too.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 12:48 PM on August 18, 2004
posted by worldcup2002 at 01:11 PM on August 18, 2004
I know this guy and yeah, to continue the theme, giant dorkfest.
posted by Bernreuther at 02:35 PM on August 18, 2004
Dorkfest. I enjoyed Word Freaks as well, and I love playing Scrabble, but like to stick to words most people have heard of. I used to think it was pretty dorky that my med school roommate and I used to play 2 or 3 games on Friday night before going out drinking...until I read that book. They made us look cool. It's no more of a sport than chess - have we done a "Chess - Sport or Not?" thread?
posted by brewdudepa at 05:52 PM on August 18, 2004
Dorkfest. On an unrelated note, I like how the membership has come out to both label "competitive Scrabble" as a dorkfest while readily admitting that they know some of the competitors. SpoFi: Dorks by proxy.
posted by lilnemo at 09:03 PM on August 18, 2004
not a sport, that's for sure.
posted by forksclovetofu at 01:49 AM on August 19, 2004
Word Wars is on the Discovery Times cable channel tonight at 8 p.m. (not sure if that is EST or both).
posted by billsaysthis at 10:38 AM on August 19, 2004
Anyone else read Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis? Pretty good book, and after reading it, I can confidently vote for dorkfest.