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1st Thomas Reinke continued his push to repeat as club champion with another first-place finish, this time ending at 4-1 +241. He successfully fended off betty in the first round, 375-346, countering her opening CLOTTED with his own EASIEST. For those interested in useless trivia, that marks the seventh time Thomas has played that particular bingo. In the second round, he beat Bryan 403-341, bingoing twice with ONLIEST (a dialectal form of ONLY, so don't play ONLIER*) and MAFTIRS. After that, Thomas suffered his only defeat of the night at the hands of James, 394-396. Maybe if Thomas had scored more than 60 points for TRACHEAE, he could have won, hmmmmm? Simultaneously, he was playing Richard, and that game went better, with him winning 453-319. Richard had the nice find of NONENTRY, while Thomas played LESBIAN and LISTSERV (n. an email system that automatically sends messages to all subscribers). Eight-letter words ending in a V are rare (HALIEROV, MAZELTOV, STOTINOV, and TOLAJREV are the other four), but not as rare as similar seven-letter words (ISOGRIV being the only one) or nine-letter words (LEITMOTIV). In the final game, he managed to pull one out against Charles, 438-420. Facing certain defeat, and with only one tile remaining in the bag, he deftly played off a clunky J, deftly drew an even clunkier Q, and deftly played an unstoppable QUAIGHS to win.

2nd Charles Reinke went 3-1 +430, coming in second to his brother, which is basically the story of his entire life if we're being totally honest. His biggest win happened in the first game, as he beat Helen 511-280. His bingos were NUDISTS and BUTYRATE. In the second round, he gave James his only loss of the night, winning 465-368. James had bingos of ALTOIST and TETANOID (adj. resembling tetanus). Charles only bingoed once, with EARWORMS, but still got the decisive win. Similarly, he gave Gail her only loss of the night in round three, with the final score being 462-342. Charles bingoed with GUESSERS and a 96-point EXTREMES. There's an old saying: when you can bingo for 100-ish points, that gives you 100-ish points more than you had last turn. Charles turned on his trusty bingo cannon for the fourth game, bingoing four times, but it proved not to be trusty enough as he lost 420-438. He played AMPOULE, ALDERMAN, MEDIATES, and CAROLERS, but somehow that was not enough.

3rd Gail Salm got her start to the new club season off right, finishing in third place at 3-1 +137. In the first game, she beat Dave 375-305, preventing him from playing any bingos at all. She herself only bingoed once, with DIVESTS; deciding that bingoing once was not acceptable, she bingoed twice in her next three games. The first of those next games was a 391-310 win against Sue. Sue did bingo, with ROASTED, but as they (and the immutable laws of mathetmatics) say, two is more than one, and Gail played TREATING and SOFTENS. In the third round, she faced Charles and lost 342-462. Her bingos were RUINATES (not to be confused with URINATES) and HOTLINE. Charles extended that second one to HOTLINER for a lot of points, which somehow seems unfair because Gail did most of the legwork in the first place. Against Betty, she won 461-355, but more importantly, won five crinkly green rectangles worth of legal American currency for her triple-triple play of SPLINTER for 149. Don't spend all those crinkly green rectangles in one place!

Mark played the Word Of The Week, DACTYLIC (n. a verse containing dactylcs, a definition which doesn't help at all if you don't know what a dactyl is in the first place).

1st Thomas Reinke started off the new club year already in midseason form, going 4-0 +342. He narrowly escaped with a win in the first round, beating Helen 456-450. 450 is Helen's second-highest losing score ever; she had previously lost to Thomas with a 459 a few years ago (secondary fun fact: she played TWISTIER in both of those games). Her triple-triple of SLUMPING for 167 wasn't quite enough to earn the win. In the second round, Thomas had another high-scoring close game, this time a 489-478 win versus Bryan. 478 is Bryan's second-highest losing score ever; he had previously lost to Thomas with a 519 a few years ago. Thomas bingoed with LATENTS, ALEURONE, ATTIRED, and DENOTES, while Bryan played SEIZING, GOATIER, and AFEBRILE (adj. having no fever). Thomas got most of his spread in the third round when he dropped 554 on Richard. His bingos were ABOITEAU (n. a dam to prevent the tide from overflowing a marsh, also spelled ABOIDEAU), IONISED, OVERFED, and BATTERS. The fourth round saw his return to having close games, as he eked out a 370-361 win against Mark using the British dictionary. Mark played the very nice EBENEZER* (only good in the British dictionary, and it doesn't mean what you think it means, I was definitely thinking like the famous SCROOGE) right at the end to make things close.

2nd Bryan Benwitz averaged 469 points per game, a stunning number which puts all MLB, NBA, and NFL teams and their paltry point totals to shame, and went 3-1 +316. His lowest-scoring game was in the first round, a 395-329 win against Betty. Betty double-blank-bingoed with CLERKED for 83, going for the "High C" prize, but her money was rudely taken from her when Bryan responded with VACATES for 89. As mentioned, he had a high-scoring loss against Thomas in the next game, 478-489. I guess the moral of the story is that playing three bingos is not enough when your opponent plays four. Not a very good moral, and not very applicable to life in general, but whatever. Bryan attempted to get revenge in the third round, but his vengeance was misplaced as he accidentally beat the other Reinke instead of the one he just lost to. The final was 523-412, with Bryan bingoing with TANNERS, DEROGATE, and MIDDLES. In the final game, he beat Dennis 478-328. Dennis bingoed first with GRANTOR, but Bryan responded with PREUNITE and SOLIDER.

3rd James Frankki put in his third straight 3-1 performance, ending at 3-1 +175 and finishing in third place. That 3-1 finish seemed to be jeopardized by his first-round loss to Dave, 373-388, followed by him getting paired up with Charles in the second round. However, he chose this time to activate "Frankki Mode", which is where he starts drawing better tiles, and won 399-368. He bingoed with MOUSING and PILEATE (adj. having a PILEUS, the umbrella-shaped portion of a mushroom) while Charles could only manage SILANES. "Frankki Mode" continued with a 442-389 win over Helen in the third game. He only bingoed once, with RESTING, so he must have been getting some big power tile plays to score so many points. The upward trend of his scores culminated in a 471-point game against Mary, when he bingoed three times: AURORAS, ABALONE, and DECRIER (at least that's what I think he played; the way it was written on the scorecard it maybe could have been DERRIER*).

1st Charles Reinke won the final session of the club statistical year, going 4-1 +296. In the first round, he beat Richard 492-379. Richard bingoed with OUTLINED and INTERCUT, and Charles played EMERSION and PENSIONI (plural of PENSIONE, a boarding house). He played two in the second round, one of those games being a 473-307 win over Betty. He played the fancy OOGENIES in that one, but what would've been even fancier is if he put the Z on it for ZOOGENIES. In the other game, he beat Dave 419-322, only bingoing once with PUTTIERS. Against Thomas in the next round, he won a close one, 415-407. He had bingoes of LOITERER, PLICATE (adj. pleated) and EYEWEAR. Thomas bingoed late with HOSANNA (v. to praise) to make things close, but he still came up just short. In the final game, things got off to a bad start (or good, depending on whether you are Team Charles or Team Bryan) when Bryan played a double-double GATEWAYS for 106 through Charles' opening play. Bryan then quickly added LUCERNE and IMPULSE to put the game out of reach, though Charles did get OXTAILS for 97 to partially soothe his wounds.

2nd Dave Gilligan had one of his better nights as a Madison Scrabbler, coming in second with a 3-1 +392 record. He had a fairly substantial win against Sue in the opening game, 412-304, helped by his bingo of SEEPING. Most of that positive spread was taken away in the second game, as he faced Charles and lost 322-419. He did out-bingo his opponent, playing IDEATION (anagrams to IODINATE and TAENIOID) and the word-of-the-week TRIMARAN, and was stopped from bingoing again by the closed-ness of the board. Knowing that he had to finish with a +392 spread to make sure the prewritten writeup (it saves a lot of time for these things, I've got like three months worth written up already, if you want to see how you're going to do in a few weels just hit me up and we can negotiate... payment) was factually correct, Dave got to work, beating Richard in the third round 427-246. He bingoed with TOILETRY and AIRIEST. AIRIEST has now been played 32 times since we started keeping track, more than any other bingo, beating out ETESIAN which has "only" been played 31 times. His final win was even more impressive, a 200-point win over Helen, 456-256. His final play of HEARTENS for 80 was a big part of him coming in second place over the three other players at 3-1.

3rd James Frankki went 3-1 +355, his number of wins coincidentally aligning with his paragraph placement. He lost a close contest in the first round, falling 366-378 to Bryan, the difference in bingos (63 for RESTATED for for James, 68 for URINATOR for Bryan) accounting for nearly half of the difference. After that, things went better for him, starting with a 439-291 win against Richard in the second round. In that game, he bingoed with REASONED and SIXTIES (new rule: any time you play a number, that's how many points you score for the play. Suddenly the letters for GOOGOL and GOOGOLPLEX became a lot more valuable!). His biggest win of the night came against Betty in the third round, as he scored 488 and bingoed with LEPTONS and UREDIAL (adj. pertaining to a UREDIUM, a spore-producing organ of certain fungi). Against Thomas in the last round, he opened with SUITERS, and rode that advantage to a narrow 388-380 win. His non-bingo play of AQUAVIT (n. a Scandinavian liquor, also spelled AKVAVIT) was instrumental in the win, even if he claims that aquavit is to expensive to be consumed on a regular basis in the United States.

Congratulations to Thomas Reinke for claiming the title of "Club Champion" for this club season! His winning percentage of 75 percent edged out Charles' 74.1 percent. Charles had won the last few years, so it's nice to see a new face as champion (even if the face is basically the same as the previous ones).