Word Wars (2004)

In this character-driven documentary, filmmakers Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo follow four "word nerds" through their fastidious preparations and smaller tournaments that lead to the national championship Scrabble tournament in San Diego in 2002.

 
Word Wars is a documentary that follows four guys who are seeking to win the scrabble world championships in San Diego. In the opening scenes of the film, we see how scrabble is made at its factory and a we get a quick rundown of the official rules and the history of the game.

We follow the guys as they practice, eat, sleep, and breathe scrabble and as San Diego draws near the nervous energy begins to unfold. 700 people. 31 games, 5 days, $25k and a trip to NYC to the winner.

What I've Learned:

• Scrabble Tournaments are huge and to unwind, some competitors play games for money at the end of tournaments.
• A Ratings system was created to "help distinguish the Grandmothers from the grandmasters"
• The Official Scrabble Dictionary was created using the five major dictionaries.
• Some of These guys have huge collections of word books and study them often
• As huge as the tournaments are, the community is small enough so that everyone actually knows or knows of each other. The subjects of this film know each other pretty well. 
• In general, People aren't aware how big these tournaments are. There are people who seriously dedicate their lives to this game
• Scrabble is huge in Washington Square Park and in true underdog fashion, one of the park players, beat the #1 player over the summer this was filmed.
• There have never been more than six women in the top 50. Supposedly, they aren't as obsessed as the guys.
• To have a better chance, at winning you have to be good with anagrams and you'll have to score at least 300 to even compete/compare.

To me, the mark of a good documentary is that after a while you start to grow with the characters. You feel their highs and lows and thou cheer for their success/failure. The guys in this film put their passion on display to the world and in the scrabble world, they're like nerdy rock stars. Maybe I'm biased because I play word games, but this was good stuff. Fun, educational, and satisfying from beginning to end. By the time the credits rolled, this shit had me jonesing for a game.

Violence? No
Explosions? Of vernacular
Nudity? No