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Thomas Reinke Returns From Dominating Reno to Find That His Appetite for Domination is Insatiable

1st Thomas Reinke took no breaks after this impressive seventh-place finish at Nationals, going 4-0 +360 in his first games back on Wisconsin soil. By his second game he had fully hit his stride, vanquishing Gail Salm 454-308 with the help of two bingos, TAILRACE and ANGINAL (played to Gail's UNDERSEA and TIDIEST). Peter Schmiedicke did not fare any better; his game against Mr. 7th Place ended at 505-371. Peter got down SEMINAR and LACERTID (n. a type of lizard), but three is always bigger than two, and Thomas had three bingos: OUTFISH, BOBTAILS, and COLLEGER. Thomas' greatest challenge proved to be the deceptively unassuming Bryan Benwitz; nursing stomachs distended by unhealthy amounts of delicious cake, the two players fought to the very end. Only one point separated their scores at the conclusion of their game, 405-404 in Thomas' favor. For his bingos, Bryan played REFASTEN and the phony JEMINDAR. JEMIDAR and ZEMINDAR are both good, but don't blame Bryan; Thomas played the same phony back in 2012. This time around, Thomas played only good words, AMBRIES and OUTLETS.

2nd Mark Kenas recovered his mojo after a few tough series against Aaron Bader, this time going 3-1 +357 and averaging 487 per game. The one game Mark lost was coincidentally the only one where he did not get at least three bingos; playing TRIAGED to Aaron's LEACHATE, the final was 379-395. After that injustice, Mark exerted his veteran status, winning the next game 566-401 with four bingos: STUNTED, SUDORAL, SHONKIER#, and the nine-letter ARGENTITE. Another 500-point game followed that up, a 523-427 win for Mark. TARDYON for 117 turned out to be the highest-scoring bingo of the evening, but Mark added SALUTING and ASTERIA to his list just to make the victory complete.

3rd Bryan Benwitz went 3-1 for the second week in a row, this time with a sizable +254 spread that put him ahead of two other players with 3-1 records. Against Charles Reinke, Bryan flexed his defensive muscle a little bit, holding the normally bingo-prone player to a zero-bingo performance. With TRAMLINE for 71 and ANXIOUS for 112, Bryan took the win easily, as candy from a baby's clutching hands, 397-361. The next two games would further showcase Bryan's ability to completely stymie his opponents as he beat Lynda Finn 371-313 before crushing Dave Gilligan 472-311. In the latter game, Dave got down a 93-point play of BECAUSE, but was otherwise unable to generate any forward momentum as Bryan scored relentlessly, getting down TUTORIAL and TOLANES along with multiple other high-scoring plays. Sadly, Bryan's night ended with a 1-point loss against first-place finisher Thomas.

We had a few new bingos played this week: TRANNIE (Peter), BROADWAY (Andy), ARSTIES (Richard), NEARISH (Dennis), and SATINED (Aaron, although it doesn't really count since SATINED has been good in Collins for a while now). Helen Flores reached deep into her bag of bingos to pull out the low-probability VICINITY as word of the week.

We welcomed new players Terry Hope and Warren Bergmann from the Oshkosh area. Both of them got one win out of three games. Hopefully they don't expect cake at every club session.

The most exciting news of the day was the great finishes at the 2015 North American SCRABBLE Championship by Thomas and Charles Reinke. In a tough field of over 300 competitors, Thomas attained a highly coveted spot in the quarterfiles where only the top 8 competitors were able to compete for the overall championship. He finished 7th and won $500. Charles competed with the rest of the pack and finished 7th, making him 15th overall, good enough for the Class B prize of $200. Thomas and Charles leave with shiny peak ratings of 1930 and 1931 respectively, putting them both squarely in the top 40 players in North America.

If you want to follow some of their games see:

Thomas vs. Kenji:  http://event.scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/showgcg.pl?id=/nsc2015/3;turn=0

Thomas vs. Panupol: http://event.scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/showgcg.pl?id=/nsc2015/18;turn=0

Thomas vs. Jesse Day: http://event.scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/showgcg.pl?id=/nsc2015/22;turn=0   and  http://event.scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/showgcg.pl?id=/nsc2015/23;turn=0

You can watch the video of Thomas playing Jessie here: http://www.twitch.tv/ggslive/v/9673302

Live streaming video coverage of the finals with Matthew Tunnicliffe and Jesse Day was excellent and a recording can be found here: http://www.twitch.tv/ggslive/v/9795136 

Meanwhile, back in Madison...

Twelve of us met in the church to play some low stakes scrabble, each of us looking forward to not taking our usual Reinke scrabble poundings. 

First place went to Peter Schmiedicke who was undefeated, going 4-0 vs. the Reinkeless field. He had the high average of the night at 444 and averaged a session leading 2 bingos per game He also had the high game of 535 against Helen, who could be heard vehemently complaining that Peter's 91 point play of RESPACE was in fact a word. 

Second place went to Bryan Benwitz who went 3-1 +247 losing only to Peter the Defeater. He hand the nice find of SENARIUS (singular of SENARII, which is a Greek or Latin verse)

Third place went to Lynda Finn who went 3-1 +172 losing only to Peter the Defeater.

Fourth place went to Mary Becker who went 3-1 +112. Her only loss was to to Lynda, which means whe was transitively defeated by Peter the Defeater who she did not have the opportunity to play.

Gail is Bingo Queen with 9 bonuses, including the beautiful PEREONS and MINIVER. Dave Gilligan gets the word of the week with the lovely SCULLERY which is a room where kitchen utensils are cleaned and stored. Runner up for WOTW goes to Helen with COLTISH which not only scored 100 points, but a challenge as well.

Thomas Reinke Boosts Confidence Before Nationals

1st Thomas Reinke now has a decent shot at winning all 31 games of next week's National Scrabble Championship thanks to his perfect 4-0 +376 record at club. All he has to do is conserve that momentum and not use it up while engaging in other tasks, like eating or sleeping. The first step of Thomas' imminent domination was taken against Aaron Bader, with that game ending 458-422 in favor of the twin. Aaron got ORIENTER and TANDEMS (new anagram: DAMNEST) to Thomas' GAYETIES, SLIPPING, and ETHINYLS. Gail Salm employed a more defensive style to try to contain Thomas' high-scoring tendencies; she succeeded in a sense, but still came away with a 336-374 loss. In the category of "consolation prizes", Gail did play the word-of-the-week RAMJETS as her only bingo in that game (Thomas was also limited to the singular MIDAIRS). Thomas then made his most convincing case for being a future national champion when he whomped his brother Charles by an impressive 190-point margin, 550-360. Charles found RESTIVE to prevent the game from turning into an even larger blowout, but his efforts were almost pathetic when compared to his brother' bingo assault: ETERNALS, BONDINGS, SPATTERS, and the nine-letter RETINULAR were more than enough to snag the win. This is the second time RETINULAR has been recorded on a scoresheet; Charles played it three years ago.

2nd Dave Gilligan, going 3-1 +291, did not get any bingos, but he did confirm what we have been suspecting all along, which is that the 50-point bonus of a bingo is actually a smokescreen instituted by undercover Russian operatives to limit the effectiveness of our Scrabble play. So, kudos to Dave for finally having the courage to open his eyes and recognize this deception. He barely came away with a victory, 358-351, against Betty Hasselkus, who scored 82 points for her bingo of POUNDER. A matchup against Gail Salm was somewhat more decisive, ending in a 397-229 Dave victory. However, the "no bingoing" strategy did not work in every game; Dennis Lloyd used his bingo of LUSTIER to take down Dave in a low-scoring 306-336 contest.

3rd Charles Reinke averaged over 500 points in his wins, but his disastrous encounter with his brother relegated him to third place with his 3-1 +147 record. Bryan Benwitz was the first to be subjugated; his match with Charles concluded with the scoresheets reading 481-308. Bryan played TONGUED, but Charles tripled that bingo output with STOLLENS, WEARIEST, and DERIVATE. A subsequent game against Richard Lauder resulted in the highest loss of the evening; Richard scored 445 but still lost by 95 points as Charles scored 540. Surprisingly for such a high-scoring game, both players had just two bingos: OPERATE and BONELIKE for Richard, FETIDLY and HOSTLING for Charles (A HOSTLER is somebody who tends horses, but HOSTLE is not a verb). Charles rounded out his collection of wins with a 486-417 triumph over Peter Schmiedicke. This time, both players had three bingos; Peter got DIATRON, PASTORS (104 points!), and AUDITEE while Charles got RALLIES, AIRBASE, and GALENITE.

Charles' AIRBASE was the only new bingo played this week. Richard did find himself with some extra spending money in his pocket thanks to a triple-triple of RELISTED for 131 points, played against Barb Besadny.