Blog

1st Lynda Finn is now winner of ten of her last eleven games, going 4-0 +436 and averaging 444 points per game, inching her yearly average closer to the fabled 400 mark. Her perfect night started with a victory over Dave Kinzer, 438-355, where her two valid bingos of AMPULES and ARCSINE were joined by a phony DANGELTS* (DANEGELT has a few alternate spellings, but DANGELT* is not one of them). That was followed up with a tightly-contested 434-430 win over Bryan Benwitz, making that two weeks in a row where she has bested the club leader. Bingos in that one were WAXIEST and LECTION for Lynda, REROUTES and MEGABITS for Bryan. In round three, Lynda handed Thomas Reinke his only loss in convincing fashion, 438-349, with finds of OVERLEAP and OSMOSES. In harmony with the old saying, Lynda saved her best for last by drubbing Sara McLaughlin in the final game, 464-294, cementing an undefeated night with bingos of DISROBE and FEVERING.

2nd Thomas Reinke went 3-1 +163 as the only player to end with three wins. In the absence of Mark Kenas, Thomas was forced to sate his appetite for Collins-lexicon combat with a pair of games against brother Charles Reinke. This venture proved successful as Thomas won both encounters, 463-431 and 519-423. His seven bingos in those two games dwarfed the total amount of bingos he played in his two non-Collins games, which was...(checks notes)...two. The seven bingos were DEROGATE, SETUALE#, VORTICES, SOUTIES#, HERNIATE, RIVULET, and REPROVEN* (looks plausible, but only REPROVED). In between those games, Thomas beat Sara McLaughlin 408-284 (playing TRIPLES) and lost to LYnda Finn 349-438 (playing SACATON).

3rd Beth Amos played an abbreviated schedule of three games, but made the most of it with a 2-1 +226 record. She scored big with a 122-point triple-triple of UTENSILS in round one, but still dropped the game to Bryan Benwitz, 379-420. She then started to live up to her nickname of "Bingoin' Beth Amos" (has kind of a Spaghetti Western ring to it) by playing three bingos (LIONISE, INLAYER, NEUROID) in a 426-372 win over Dave Kinzer. Beth finished her night with a crushing 486-273 victory against Richard Lauder, where her sole bingo of REASSURE for seventy points must have been supplemented by some other big non-bingo plays to account for her huge score.

1st Charles Reinke astoundingly averaged above 500 across his five games (512, to be exact), and unsurprisingly won them all with a 5-0 +760 record. He also played fifteen bingos in his five games, averaging out to a nice even three per game. Needing no time at all to warm up, game one saw him wipe the floor with Sara McLaughlin, getting four bingos (TERYLENE, SORRIEST, WINIEST, INCASES) in a 555-319 win. Taking on two opponents in the second round, Charles' bingoing slowed down but his winning ways did not. Against Dave Kinzer, Charles matched Dave's IODISER* (only good in Collins) and DRAINED with his own FOLIAGE and CRUZEIRO, taking the win 478-369. At the same time, Charles got IRRITANT and CORSETS (vs. his opponent's MATTIFY# and SPINETTE#) in a 502-382 win over Mark Kenas. Charles' lowest score came in a 472-347 win over Lynda Finn (bingos of ADNOUNS, DIRECTLY, and MISENTER helped him there), but he vaulted right back into the 500s when he secured his undefeated record with a 554-384 rematch win against Mark. The bingo bonanaza continued with ENTRANT, MEINIES, SAUNAED, and word-of-the-week KINGBOLT.

2nd Bryan Benwitz had his winning streak snapped at fourteen straight (earning him nine dollars; five for the ten-game streak and one dollar for each game after ten), but still finished in second with a 3-1 +190 record. Playing exactly two bingos in all his games (a feat which one feels like he may have achieved before) actually brought down his yearly bingo average, which had stood at around 2.2 per game. Bryan started with a 371-283 win versus Ron Malzer, bingoing with ELODEAS and SIGNAGE. But that was where his winning streak finally came to an end, as Lynda Finn vanquished him in the second round, 363-398, despite Bryan's finds of LINGOES and MOISTURE. A new winning streak was initiated with a 418-289 win against Dave Kinzer (where a late-game overdraw by Dave prevented him from making it closer, thanks to the extremely punishing rules regarding overdraws with fewer than seven tiles in the bag), and the nascent win streak was continued when Bryan won a close one against Thomas Reinke, 398-390.

3rd Lynda Finn went 3-1 +24, but more importantly than that, ended Bryan's winning streak and came away with a crisp, ready-to-spend pile of five one-dollar bills as a reward for being the streak buster. She followed the patented "Benwitz method" of bingoing the same amount of times in every game, but with just one bingo per game, Lynda didn't use the method to its fullest. Her game-one 376-324 victory against Beth Amos, playing a bingo of ADJOINT, set her up for success, which she converted into the streak-terminating 398-363 win over Bryan Benwitz that was discussed earlier. The high-prob INFARES was Lynda's bingo in that one. She was roundly defeated by Charles Reinke in round three (also discussed earlier), but recovered with a strong 400-338 triumph against Sara McLaughlin to finish off another successful club session.

1st Bryan Benwitz extended his winning streak to 13 games with a spotless 4-0 +240 record. Each game of that personal-best winning streak has seen Bryan score above 400, meaning that the possible (probable?) key to ending Bryan's streak is to force him to score in the 300s. He kicked off his latest round of heinie-whuppings with a 444-343 win against Charles Reinke, finding GAROTTE, UNIFILAR, and word of the week SEEDCAKE in the winning effort. He got the Reinkes out of the way early by dispatching Thomas Reinke in round two, although the score was much closer at 426-422. Bryan got down the high-probability sevens of CORDAGE and LAAGERS, while Thomas responded with some high-probability bingos of his own, NEROLIS and TURNABLE. Bryan's bingo output was reduced in round three, but the winning continued without interruption, as he felled Helen Flores 413-340 with a sole bingo of AROUSER. The winning streak remained intact in the final round when he defeated the visiting one-man Iowa contigent, Mike Johnson, by a score of 455-393. His bingos there were PRANCED and QUAERES.

2nd Lynda Finn didn't quite make it to thirteen wins in a row, but her 3-1 +337 record saw her win her final three games of the night, so if we just give her a few more weeks, thirteen wins is completely doable. Losing to Sara McLaughlin 354-368 in the opening game was not an ideal start for Lynda, but the recovery began immediately when she played EGESTION and COALIEST to take a 436-368 win over Richard Lauder (who had TENORITE and the sounds-offensive-but-isn't FAGOTER). Lynda then scored a sizable win over Dave Kinzer, 421-327, with a single bing of SPOTTER. But Lynda's true nature as a dealer of Scrabble punishment was fully apparent in the final round when she trounced Helen Flores 443-254, playing bingos of ENSLAVED and NOVENAE in the process.

3rd Thomas Reinke went 3-2 +72, using the bonus fifth game to prevail over a knot of players stuck at 2-2 records. His first-round match against Richard Lauder resulted in a quite favorable outcome, 477-428, but that big margin was later undone by a devastating loss to Charles Reinke, 328-547. In that one, Charles played the nines of TELFERING and DOLLARISE# not just for style points, but actual Scrabble points as well. In between those games, Thomas grabbed a pair of wins off Mark Kenas, 436-370 and 467-431. Uncharacteristically for those high-powered Collins games, Thomas had only three bingos combined in the two wins: FURCATED, DISORDER, and OUTPAINT. Thomas' closely-fought 422-426 defeated at the unbeatable expertise of Bryan Benwitz was the other loss on his scorecard.