Rave: Is "Scrabblemania" A Word?

I'm in the middle of reading Stephen Fatsis' "Word Freak", which is an incredibly interesting book about the inside world of competitive Scrabble playing. OK, so I know it's incredibly dorky, too, but remember I'm the same gal that dragged my husband to see Word Play, so there you go.

During the course of Word Freak the writer, who started the book as a "journalistic" approach to the game, becomes increasingly obsessed with Scrabble. He ends up memorizing all the 2,3, and 4 letter Scrabble words, anagramming on the subway, and learning the Bingo word lists.

But the more I read the book, Fatsis' obsession becomes MY obsession. I don't want to admit it to anyone, but I am thinking about printing out all the 2 and 3 letter Scrabble word lists from the Hasbro site. I mean, I just beat my husband by a good 40 point margin on a Scrabble game and I'm still thinking about it.

So what's with my Scrabble obsession? Is it the same nagging feeling we get from Sodoku and cross word puzzles, that the human brain needs to be able to fill in the blanks that we see? Who cares. We'll just see if I can beat Mr. and Mrs. Prof. McRib (competitive board game players) the next time we're in the big D.