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Bryan Benwitz Outwitz His Opposition

1st Bryan Benwitz went 4-0 with an average of 462 to claim the coveted "first paragraph in the writeup" prize. His path to a perfect night was nearly obstructed in the first game, as the pairing gods decided to test his mettle with a matchup against club leader Charles. Bryan perservered, and managed to squeak out a high-scoring 460-456 win thanks in part to his double-U find of URINOUS. In the second game, Helen's duplicate-letter-laden SETTEES was no match for another nice Bryan bingo, BILOBATE (adj. having two lobes). Bryan continued along the path to a perfect night with a win against Mary, 458-322, playing the odd-looking IDONEITY (n. the state of being idoneous (suitable)). Club historians will remember when former club member and noted odd-looking word player John O'Laughlin played that word against this writer, and this writer challenged it and felt like a doofus when it came back acceptable. Bryan's perfect night came to a perfect end against Andy, with him tallying his lowest score of the evening, but still winning, 449-388. And so it was that Bryan, by virtue of being the only undefeated player, earned this first paragraph in the writeup.

2nd Charles Reinke somehow saw his club-leading 80% winning percentage on the year decrease with a vaguely disappointing 3-1 record. The aforementioned close lose to Bryan could have easily sent Charles on a downward spiral culminating in an 0-4 record; however, he pulled himself together to win his next three games to salvage the night. A close contest during the second game this time ended in his favor, 429-420, with his three bingos of LANEWAYS, REALIZED, and VASTIEST overcoming Peter's BELADIES (v. BELADY, to apply the title of lady to), COENURI, and ERGATES. Emboldened by vicotry, he followed up these two tight games with two comfortable wins, 537-331 against Gail and 458-283 against Mary.

3rd Andy Bohnsack overcame his tardiness to go 3-1 +216. A 456-354 first round game against Buffy saw him play OATCAKE (n. probably some sort of ambrosial combination of oatmeal and a pancake), STRIPPER, and GASOLINE. His bingo-cannon continued warming up against Barb, with him playing STEROID and ANISOLES. Fully primed, his bingo-cannon went off, bombarding Thomas in the form of four bingos, OUTREAD, SAXATILE (adj. living among rocks), REDDISH, and ACRIDEST. Though the bulk of its power was used up, his bingo-cannon managed to weakly lob two more bingos in the general direction of Bryan, DISCRETE and BANDITS.

Two new bingos were played this week: LETOUTS by Thomas and LENDINGS by Peter. Mary played the word of the week, DAMASKS.

Thomas Reinke Receives Visions, Wins Scrabble Games

1st Thomas Reinke looked into the future, saw the list of Scrabblers that he was destined to play, and thought to himself, "I can probably beat all those dudes, and I say dudes because they are all, in fact, of the dude gender", before unbidden visions of his dismantling of said dudes invaded his mind. With a sense of inevitability and a feeling of horror at the realization that his actions were not truly his own, he won his first game against Bryan, 479-347, aided by his "find" of AGATIZES (v. to convert into agate). This large-ish victory gave way to three tight contests in a row, with him winning by increasingly nail-biting margins of 21, 5, and 2 against Peter, Charles, and Andy. A timely "find" of LONGTIME was the difference against Peter, a timely endgame phony of (phony redacted) earned him the victory against Charles, and his opponent's "fourth round melancholy" during a tough endgame propelled him over Andy.

2nd Charles Reinke was denied yet another perfect evening by his eternal nemesis Thomas, but his 3-1 +262 record was still good for second place. You know what they say, though: if you're not first, you're last. Since we don't reserve paragraphs for last-place finishers, I think this particular section is finished.

3rd Andy Bohnsack came in third thanks to the mysterious inner-workings of the club website, which proclaims his 3-2 record to be better than Dennis' 2-1 record. Andy sustained a drubbing at the hands of suddenly-extremely-bingo-prone Peter in a two-on-one in the first round, 313-537. Never one to give up, he showed impressive resilience to beat his other opponent, Joe, 474-338, while playing the appropriate NEWBIES. A second-round duel against Buffy also ended in his favor, with him playing PROTEASE and SLIDDEN, an apparent past-participle of SLID. He concluded his three-game mini winning streak by prevailing over Dennis, playing the seasonally-appropriate SKIABLE and the never-appropriate-because-it's-not-a-word DISHORT. Kind reminder to club members: if you don't mark your phonies with quotes, the stats-entering person gets very confused and upset.

Extra bonus tidbit: relative newcomer Joe Horowitz achieved the rare "bingo-bango-bongo-bungo" in his game against Bryan, playing SPARING, ENTAILS, TWINKLED, and DETAILER over four consecutive turns.

New bingos: EGOTIZES (Peter), AIRBASES (Gail), AIRSOME (Bryan). Buffy's nice find of CHUTNEYS was chosen as word of the week, for no other reason that that the writer is very hungry right now.

Bitter Cold Freezes Thomas Reinke's Heart Into an Unfeeling Mass of Scrabble Dominance

1st Thomas Reinke's normally kind nature was replaced by the single-minded purpose of winning games of Scrabble Brand Crossword Game as he went 4-0 +345. A closed board in his first game against Betty opened up enough at the end to let him play OSTEITIC (pertaining to OSTEITIS, bone inflammation) for the win. Thomas overcame in his second game Andy's wasteful opening rack of EINORT? to win 454-360, with the bingos of ABATTOIR, PROTEAS, and CINEAST (an enthusiAST of CINEma). In his third game he avoided the pitfalls of listening to his opponent, ignoring Aaron's utterance of "There are no bingos from the W" and bingoing out with WINSOMER to win by 5, 415-410. To be fair to Aaron, WINSOMER is a pretty stupid looking word. In the last game, Thomas could feel his heart unfreezing from the warm camaraderie of the room, and as quickly as possible dispatched Gail, 418-307, before the last of the ice shards melted away, leaving behind a dazed, confused, and undefeated Scrabbler.

2nd Charles Reinke was unaffected either positively or negatively by the bitter cold, going 4-1 +152 in his normal manner. His secret dreams of going undefeated were quickly dispelled by Peter, who bingoed out with FAILINGS to win 475-438, undoing Charles' WATERIER the previous turn. Despite the dismantling of his plans going into the evening, Charles recovered to win the rest of his games, starting with Bryan, against whom he won 433-366. This would normally be the time in the writeup to detail what kind of crazy bingos he played; sadly, his bingos were pedestrian by his standards, and do not earn any special mention. CUITTLE (v. to coax), played during a 2-on-1 against Dennis, isn't so bad I guess.

3rd Gail Salm's own dreams of going undefeated took a lot longer to be dispelled than Charles', as she won her first three contests before being bested by the unfeeling one in her final game. An opening 440-337 victory against Adrienne lead into a surprisingly close and hard-fought win against Buffy, 414-400. I say surprising, because normally when someone gets outbingoed 3-0, the point differential is a little larger. Just goes to show that bingos aren't the sole purpose of Scrabble, and playing to score every turn can sometimes be just as good. Right? Right. Gail picked up another 3-bingo game against Andy, winning big 423-296. The score would have been closer, but Andy was stymied by one of his racks near the end.

Aaron's DRACHMAE was chosen as word of the week. A DRACHMA is (or was, thanks to the Euro) a currency of Greece, and  pluralizes with either an S, E, or I.

Prepare yourself for an extremely long and tedious list of new bingos played this week:
ANODISE, by Helen.