Word Wars - Director’s Statement
Eric Chaikin 1/04

“The Day I Got Sucked Right Back In”

I remember it well: October 6th, 1997. I was celebrating my 30th birthday, wearing a fluorescent shirt, and strolling through Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Now, I’ve always been perhaps a bit more word-obsessed than even your average logophile. In college I had been introduced to the tournament Scrabble world and considered it a good excuse to practice using new words against like-minded folks. But it got a bit too intense even for me when I realized that in order to succeed I would have to digest not only lists of interesting words, but lists without meaning – organized by “alphagram” – the alphabetical ordering of the letters – so that I could immediately find them in my rack. I started learning the basic “stems” : SATIRE + 1 letter = ARISTAE, ASTERIA, ATRESIA, BAITERS, REBAITS, TERBIAS, and so on. These were lists of letter patterns, definitions not required. And even though this appealed to my puzzling nature, at some point it was either spend the next few years with these lists, or step away and forsake Scrabble greatness. I chose the latter.

But here I was 10 years later, on a sunny autumn day in Manhattan, happening upon a group of guys tossing a few dollars back and forth, bantering, and playing what looked like some serious games of Scrabble. I inched up to the table, not even registering on their collective radar screen. After about an hour, I worked up some nerve. “Anyone want to play for money?.” I asked. “That guy will play you.” said a gruff older gentleman, pointing me to a wiry, athletic-looking guy who seemed more like I might meet him playing hoops than Scrabble. We set some stakes - he proposed $2 per game and 2 cents per point differential - and figuring I was no slouch, I raised them. Little did I know.

As fate would have it, I went first, picked a blank, and played [K]IOSQUE for 100 points, making the blank a K. He recoiled a little as if to say “Who’s this guy?”, but then he did the unthinkable – he challenged. Now, I was as sure as I could be about this alternate spelling of “kiosk”, having just stumbled across it in Webster’s Third – the big dictionary. But not only was my opponent challenging, but he was gently assuring me he was sure it wasn’t in the Scrabble dictionary. Sure enough it wasn’t. I lost that game, aided by that play as well as by foolishly trying to push through some phony 5 letter words. GLENN* and FUTCH* if you must know. Each was challenged with aplomb and summarily removed. I was intrigued.

Turns out I had been sent to one of the “big boys”. The guy across from me was Matt Graham, who had just finished 2nd in the World Chamionships, and was known for his intense, aggressive style. We became friends and played many sessions in his apartment, which was just big enough to hold the two of us as well as all of Matt’s books and other primarily word and sports-related paraphernalia. He was only one of the interesting people I would connect with over long Scrabble sessions, sometimes during weekdays, sometimes overnight, some in crowded apartments, and some in whatever diner would let us sit there drinking long-ago-ordered coffee. “There are levels to this game you can’t even conceive of”, Matt told me – like an oracle guarding some secret knowledge. And in a sense he was.

I starting going studying like crazy and going to the New York City club, where I met Joel Sherman among many others. I eased back in to the tournament scene finding another partner-in-crime in Marlon Hill, who for all of his bravado, somehow seemed to always back it up by pulling out a 12 letter anagram – the word equivalent of a 3-pointer from the corner. “You got talent,” he would tell me, “but we got to get you some game.” Stefan Fatsis had recently come on the scene to document the goings-on for his book Word Freak. And plenty of goings-on there were. I found myself thinking – on a regular basis – Someone should have a camera here.

And that may be the one and only surefire recipe for a great documentary. The rest is in the movie which, I hope, speaks for itself.

Back to Filmmakers