Word Wars

Aroview: A chastening, though lightly toned chronicle of a year on the US scrabble circuit for four top players, each hoping to win the US$25000 top prize at the National Championships.

With excellence coming only with a heavy price of daily rote learning of letter-word combinations, these players survive variously with Zen meditation, zero social-life, hand-to-mouth employment and smalltime gambling against each other. The reward is scoring regularly in the 400s and above, and knowing many more words than the average person - though as one player put it, learning what the words actually mean tends to "get in the way".