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1st Thomas Reinke topped a trio of 3-1 finishers with his superior +328 spread. He started off on the right foot, but also sort of the wrong foot, with a first-round victory over Richard Lauder, 387-340. Richard had two bingos (ALIBIED and CORONATE), while Thomas had none (that's where the "wrong foot" part comes in). Footing was regained in the second round, when Thomas took down Mary Becker by a score of 454-311. The proverbial tables were flipped as Mary was held bingoless while Thomas got down RADIALE and ELEGIES. In round three, Bryan Benwitz faced the full extent of Thomas' wrath, and since "wrath" in a Scrabble context means "scoring lots of points", it's no surprise that Thomas won that one as well, 529-349. Supplying many of those points was Thomas' 140-point triple-triple ABUTILON (a flowering plant), in addition to bingos of PLEADING and LANGSYNE (Bryan had HOARSELY and WINIEST). Thomas' quest for a perfect record was rudely interrupted in the final game of the night as he ran up against his brother Charles Reinke and lost 408-450. The brothers stayed on the high-probability end of the bingo spectrum: Thomas had ROUNDER and BEANIES to Charles' OUTVIES and CORANTOS.

2nd Dave Gilligan averaged 402 per game, well above historical norms, on his way to a 3-1 +172 record wherein every win was comfortably above the 400-point threshold. His first game was a 414-328 win over Helen Flores, made possible in part by a 104-point BLANKETS, his tenth-highest scoring bingo ever in club play. He also played COTERIES for some extra scoring punch. The following game, against Bryan Benwitz, was less kind, and Dave was handed his only loss, 327-434. Order was restored to the universe as a third-round game against Mary Becker resulted in the desired outcome (a win, unless you're a masochist), 412-359. The combatants had one bingo apieced: CROONED for Dave, SIFTING for Mary. Dave went into the last round knowing that a paragraph in the writeup was on the line, and he didn't disappoint, toppling club stalwart Richard Lauder 454-314. Richard had ROSIEST to turn a "blowout" into a "not quite as much of a blowout", while Dave had REBOOTED and ANERGIA.

3rd Bryan Benwitz followed the same pattern as Dave, scoring above 400 in all his victories as he finished at 3-1 +158. The first victory came against Charles Reinke, 468-470. Bryan played MARRING, FADDISH (given the placement of the blank, Bryan could have played CADDISH, KADDISH, LADDISH, or MADDISH as well), and APPRAISE (which can be extended to APPRAISEE). Charles had NONWHITE and LITTORAL in his losing effort. Bryan then defeated Dave GIlligan 434-327 despite the bingo tally being even (UNEARNED for Bryan, EDITION for Dave). The third round brought a spread-destroying 349-529 loss against Thomas Reinke (the gory details of which can be relived above), but Bryan's ship righted in the fourth round when he defeated Dennis Lloyd 456-323. Dennis had the nice find of COYOTES (anagram: OOCYTES), but Bryan outdid him with TWASOME and STEROID, the latter for 97 points (somebody explain to me how STEROID could ever score 97 points).

Mark Kenas' SYNTAGMA was chosen as word of the week. SYNTAGM is also a word.

1st Thomas Reinke, a few tiles at a time over the course of dozens of turns, scored enough points to go 4-0 +486, good for first place. In the opener against Helen, he faced an early bingo-sized deficit after she opened with NODULES, but didn't let that fact daunt him as he ended up scoring 574. His bingos were TAMENESS, ANTIRIOT, ETESIAN, and ALFORJA (n. a saddlebag), which would have been way more points had the J not actually been a blank. His game against Charles ended 388-355 in his favor, a relatively low scoring game for those two. The most notable thing that happened was Thomas' word-of-the-week SIXPENCE (n. a former British coin worth six pennies). TWO-, THREE-, FOUR-, and TEN- PENCE are also accetable. And if you're playing Collins, the rest of the numbers up to nine are also good. His bingoing took another 50 percent hit as he only did so once against Dave, but managed to eke out a 390-364 win. Dave played JAUNTIER while Thomas eventually got down KEYLESS after pulling KXQ?S on a five-tile draw. Power tiles are good, but they can be a little overwhelming all at once. In the final game, he supposedly played a game of "Collins" against Mark, but since all of the bingos played were acceptable in the normal dictionary it's hard to tell. Thomas' bingos were LITOTES, ANAPAEST, GRAFFITO (n. just one graffiti, no word on whether the S front-hook SGRAFFITO was played), and DOILIED. That last one was an out-bingo, and he caught Mark with 40 points worth of goodies, so the final was 508-385.

2nd Aaron Bader went 3-0 +265, beating Mark three times in their three-game Collins series. His night got off to a great start as his first fourt tiles were LLWX and he played MAXWELL (n. a unit of magnetic flux) for 98. He ended up using all of those points to win 467-386, countering Mark's PORCINE and CORSETED with FEMINISM and DORTIEST*. DORTY is good as an adjective in our dictionary, but it doesn't compare because of reasons. In the second game of the set he won 516-393, highlighted by his double-double find of PENUCHLE (n. a card game derived from the older game BEZIQUE, also spelled PENUCKLE, PINOCLE, and PINOCHLE) for 98 points. Since we know his final record, we can surmise that he probably won his third game as well, and a thorough examination of the scorecard reveals that to be the case, 459-398. Mark played JEALOUS and TAINTING, while Aaron got down DAMIANAS and RENNASE. There was no fourth game for him; he left, taking his precious dictionary with him, leaving Mark and Thomas to just guess at what words were good for their last game. Knowing Collins, it was every pronouncable combo of vowels and consonants.

3rd Richard Lauder went 3-1 +75, following up a (presumably) successful day on the golf course with a successful Scrabble evening. He missed the first round due to golf-related reasons, so he played two in the second round, Mary and Dave. He bingoed with SASSING and squeaked by Mary 356-346, Mary's final clunky rack making the difference. He wasn't so lucky against Dave, as he lost 308-406 and watched his opponent play TONIEST, EASIEST, and ENTERON. He then faced Charles (who was also occupied with Helen) and won 421-387. Richard pulled off a rare feat, getting a phony bingo, IODISER*, past the normally perfect word-recall machine. IONISER was added in the latest dictionary update, which may have been the source of confusion. He saved his best for last against Gail, winning 454-325 and bingoing three times. He bingoed with both the Q, with QUEEREST, and the Z, with ZINGERS, which is not something that I can recall happening before but am too lazy to check. Gail did play a nine through disconnected letters, BRAINIEST, but style points, sadly, count for naught under our current rule regime.

1st Thomas Reinke (his scoresheet anonymously amended with the personal title "loser" even though he only lost one game) came in first place with a 4-1 +257 record. He lived up to his "loser" title by losing to Bryan in the first round, 385-453. This despite his bingo trio of OLEATES, LENTOIDS, and STARETS (n. a spiritual adviser in the Eastern Orthodox Church, plural STARTSY. Rasputin, the famous Russian mystic, was kind of like a starets). After that history lesson, Thomas played two, Gail and Richard. He had a smooth go of it against Gail, scoring 501 and playing CAMPOREE, APERIENT, and FARINOSE. Things were a lot closer against Richard, but he managed to squeeze a bingo down on the last play of the game, SPIRTING, to win by 6, 372-366. Against Charles in the third round, he won 415-385 with an opening bingo of BASMATI and a later IGNITER. For his final act, he ventured into unknown territory and played a game of Collins with Mark. It must have went well for him using the British dictionary, because he won 441-363. A double-double NAIVETY for 108 really helped, as did his Collins-only find of EUOUAES*. A EUOUAE* is a Latin mnemonic for a Gregorian cadence, taken from the vowels in "saeculorum Amen". I thought we were supposed to be playing in English? If the idea of playing six-letter words with no consonants is appealing to you, talk to Aaron.

2nd Bryan Benwitz went 3-1 +597, averaging a quite high 489 points as well as 3 bingos per game. He failed to meet either of those averages while beating Thomas 453-385, "only" bingoing with SERIATE (fun bingo stats incoming: SERIATE has now been played at club 19 times, and is catching up to its anagram AERIEST, which has been played 20 times) and BROTHER. He picked up his statistical output against Helen in the next game, winning 523-313. He held Helen bingoless while keeping all the bingos for himself: ANTHROS (n. ANTHRO, short for anthropology), BRAINIER, STEADIES, and HIPLINE. Bryan lost 355-398 against Richard, with Richard's PRETERM (n. a child born prematurely) for 92 drawing an unsuccessful challenge and swinging the game in his favor. In the final game he unleashed the fury against Dennis, scoring 624 and bingoing five times. That means over a third of the tiles in the bag were used for his rack-clearing plays, which illustrates how hard it gets to bingo that often. Those bingos were TANYARD, ERODABLE, SACATON, DREDGING, and MONSTERA (n. a tropical American plant). If you weren't aware of the A extension to the end of MONSTER, consider yourself enlightened.

3rd Charles Reinke had a spread of +543 but came in third with his 3-1 record because of Bryan's even more ridiculous spread. A big chunk of his spread came right away with his 573-325 win versus Gail. Gail played RETINTS and SALTIRE, but it only slightly lessened the impact of Charles' CINEOLE, ARGENTUM, AUTHORS, and HONKIES (gasp, I thought this was a family-friendly writeup). A close game against Dennis ended in Charles' favor 384-352 as he drew the remainder of those ever-useful 4-point consonants at the end, leaving Dennis unable to score enough to catch up. Against Thomas, he played READOUTS, and SQUAMATE (n. any of an order of reptiles), but lost 385-415. The previously-unknown two-letter extension for SQUAMATE, DESQUAMATE (v. to come off in scales or flakes, like skin, isn't that disgusting?), which would have scored 60-ish points, went unplayed for the entire game. Another big chunk of spread came against Richard in the final round, as Charles won 579-286. He had three nice bingos, MATELOTE, BEGGARLY for 110 and the word-of-the-week SIDDURIM (n. SIDDUR, a Jewish prayer book). Before you get too congratulatory, let it be known that DRUIDISM would've been more points.

Congratulations to Helen for playing the last remaining unplayed word of 8 in the AEGINST rack, GENISTA. Someone has been reading the writeups!