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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Mleith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

This week I'm very pleased to be joined by the writer Stefan Fatsis, who is the author,

as many listeners will know, of 2001's word freak, heartbreak, triumph genius, and obsession in the world of competitive scrabble. And that book, I'm slightly mortified to realize, is 25 years old this year.

Stefan, welcome. Now, you're not as mortified as I am, Sam, to realize that it's 25 years old.

Let me tell you. Well, it has lasted very

well. It's aged like a fine wine. But this is a book, if I understand it rightly, that, you know,

you're as a professional sports writer, as a journalist, you thought, like, I'll do a story

on what it's like getting involved in the world of professional scrabble. And you kind of went

native, didn't you?

Oh, instantly. I realized that I didn't just want to write about this world. I wanted to be part of this world. And that recognition was significant.

Journalistically, because it shifted my thinking from, okay, I'll just do a story, a piece about this weird subculture,

where there's a, there are national championships and world championships and some interesting

players and interesting ideas and strategy and gaming to how do I become great at this, shifting

from a traditional piece of, of reporter-based journalism, parachuting in, observing,

doing interviews, writing, to first-person participatory journalism, which at the time I hadn't done.

I was a straight reporter. I worked for the Wall Street Journal at the time that I wrote

...