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Charles Reinke Ends Evening With the Same Amount of Losses as He Started With: Zero!

1st Charles Reinke was the only player to not record a loss, so it is fitting that he end up in first place.  The highlight of his night was beating Helen Flores 490-356, but that highlight was marred by his phony of UNWELDS (only UNWELDED is good, even though UNSOLDER is good by itself).  That same game he played another UN- word, UNRULED, making good use of the undesirable U tile.  In his defeat of Barb Besadny, he again used a U to play the word of the week, SUNRAYS.  Charles now holds a commanding seven-percentage-point lead at the top of the club standings.

2nd Andy Bohsnack went 3-1 +161, good for second place in a competitive expert group.  In a cruel twist of fate, his high score of the night came in a 469-486 defeat at the experienced hands of Mark Kenas.  Andy's three bingos that game (INDUCTED, DEFUSING, SKIRRING) were matched by three of Mark's (PROEMIAL, DATIVELY, and ENTICES).  Andy's other tri-bingo effort resulted in a happier result, that being a 110-point, 466-356 win against Peter Schmiedicke.  A crown to commemorate Andy's Bingo King status (this week and all forseeable weeks in the future) has been mailed to his house.

3rd Mark Kenas finished at 3-1 +49.  Mary Becker handed him his only loss when she beat him 438-315.  From that result we can deduce the one course of action necessary to defeat Mark: prevent him from bingoing.  Of course, since he knows all the bingos, that feat is exceedingly difficult to achieve.  Mark scored a hearty 454, 486, and 438 in his wins.

Sue Goldstein Calmly Takes Care of Intermediates

1st Sue Goldstein ended at 2-1 -70.  She beat both Aki Miura (312-366) and June Scott (317-308) in low-scoring brawls, but fell to expert player Mary Becker.

2nd Aki Miura made his return to club play in triumphant fashion, splitting his games at 1-1 -7.  His victory was against June Scott, 301-262, and his opponents averaged a brutal 287 points per game.  Hint: when playing Aki, try to open the board, because he's going to try to do the opposite!

Brian Benwitz came out on top in every category (top finisher, top average score, lowest opponent average, most phonies). A successfull session all around in that everyone averaged 2 bingos per game and over 400 points per game, Peter got the best word, with the nice play of ?AIORTY through a J. 

Andy Bohnsack is Probably Just a Cyborg Programmed to Play Bingos

1st Andy Bohnsack had 14 bingos en route to 4-0 +487.  He had back-to-back 500-point games in rounds three and four: 524-331 against Lynda Finn, and 500-285 against Mary Becker.  He played four bingos in both of those games, as well as his game against Charles Reinke, but only played two in his game against Shayla Dunn (SNOOZER and RUMMIES).  One day in the near future, Andy will get 20 bingos in a night, and at that point we might as well just stop playing Scrabble.

2nd Charles Reinke went 4-1 +460.  Like Andy above, Charles broke the 400-mark in all of his games.  The one blemish on his scorecard was a high-scoring 467-494 loss versus Andy, the score of 467 being Charles' highest loss of the year.  He played INVERTED, GATEAUS (N. a fancy cake...what's the word for a plain cake?), and UPSTARED in his futile effort to out-bingo Andy, who played HEROINE, UPSTARED (does that word look familiar?), MILTERS, and BOTCHING.  Charles also had the highest game of the night when he recorded a 529 against Barb Besadny.

3rd Bryan Benwitz made the most out of one of his infrequent appearances at club, dispatching three experts on the way to 3-1 +181.  He lost a close one 371-384 versus Lynda Finn in the first game of the night (playing SOLATED to Lynda's ENTWINED and HOTNESS), then beat Thomas Reinke, Richard Lauder, and Shayla Dunn.  His high game of 466 against Richard consisted of the good find of CARBONIC and the good phony of TIEABLE. 

June Scott Unleashes the Fury

1st June Scott went 2-1 -179, getting down the bingo of BOATERS when she beat Harwinder Dowd 401-324.  401 is June's highest game of the year up to this point.

2nd Harwinder Dowd finished up 1-2 -23, her win coming against expert Barb Besadny, 409-316.  She played one bingo in each game: SNAILED, SKATERS, and IGNITES.

Shayla Dunn played the word of the week, JAUNDICE, in her 402-491 loss against Charles Reinke.  She also played the word COLLEENS in that game, which is a noun meaning "an Irish girl".  Thomas Reinke unofficially got "phony of the week" with his double-double, nine-letter NORLANDER against Helen Flores, defined by Thomas as "an inhabitant of the norland".  If you add the letters EIKR, you get ERIK NORLANDER, a semi-famous prog-rock keyboardist, but sadly for us, proper nouns are not valid Scrabble words.  It was a good night for phonies (or a bad night for well-timed, poker-faced deception, depending on your perspective), as NORLANDER and TIEABLE were the only ones played.