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1st Thomas Reinke (his scoresheet anonymously amended with the personal title "loser" even though he only lost one game) came in first place with a 4-1 +257 record. He lived up to his "loser" title by losing to Bryan in the first round, 385-453. This despite his bingo trio of OLEATES, LENTOIDS, and STARETS (n. a spiritual adviser in the Eastern Orthodox Church, plural STARTSY. Rasputin, the famous Russian mystic, was kind of like a starets). After that history lesson, Thomas played two, Gail and Richard. He had a smooth go of it against Gail, scoring 501 and playing CAMPOREE, APERIENT, and FARINOSE. Things were a lot closer against Richard, but he managed to squeeze a bingo down on the last play of the game, SPIRTING, to win by 6, 372-366. Against Charles in the third round, he won 415-385 with an opening bingo of BASMATI and a later IGNITER. For his final act, he ventured into unknown territory and played a game of Collins with Mark. It must have went well for him using the British dictionary, because he won 441-363. A double-double NAIVETY for 108 really helped, as did his Collins-only find of EUOUAES*. A EUOUAE* is a Latin mnemonic for a Gregorian cadence, taken from the vowels in "saeculorum Amen". I thought we were supposed to be playing in English? If the idea of playing six-letter words with no consonants is appealing to you, talk to Aaron.

2nd Bryan Benwitz went 3-1 +597, averaging a quite high 489 points as well as 3 bingos per game. He failed to meet either of those averages while beating Thomas 453-385, "only" bingoing with SERIATE (fun bingo stats incoming: SERIATE has now been played at club 19 times, and is catching up to its anagram AERIEST, which has been played 20 times) and BROTHER. He picked up his statistical output against Helen in the next game, winning 523-313. He held Helen bingoless while keeping all the bingos for himself: ANTHROS (n. ANTHRO, short for anthropology), BRAINIER, STEADIES, and HIPLINE. Bryan lost 355-398 against Richard, with Richard's PRETERM (n. a child born prematurely) for 92 drawing an unsuccessful challenge and swinging the game in his favor. In the final game he unleashed the fury against Dennis, scoring 624 and bingoing five times. That means over a third of the tiles in the bag were used for his rack-clearing plays, which illustrates how hard it gets to bingo that often. Those bingos were TANYARD, ERODABLE, SACATON, DREDGING, and MONSTERA (n. a tropical American plant). If you weren't aware of the A extension to the end of MONSTER, consider yourself enlightened.

3rd Charles Reinke had a spread of +543 but came in third with his 3-1 record because of Bryan's even more ridiculous spread. A big chunk of his spread came right away with his 573-325 win versus Gail. Gail played RETINTS and SALTIRE, but it only slightly lessened the impact of Charles' CINEOLE, ARGENTUM, AUTHORS, and HONKIES (gasp, I thought this was a family-friendly writeup). A close game against Dennis ended in Charles' favor 384-352 as he drew the remainder of those ever-useful 4-point consonants at the end, leaving Dennis unable to score enough to catch up. Against Thomas, he played READOUTS, and SQUAMATE (n. any of an order of reptiles), but lost 385-415. The previously-unknown two-letter extension for SQUAMATE, DESQUAMATE (v. to come off in scales or flakes, like skin, isn't that disgusting?), which would have scored 60-ish points, went unplayed for the entire game. Another big chunk of spread came against Richard in the final round, as Charles won 579-286. He had three nice bingos, MATELOTE, BEGGARLY for 110 and the word-of-the-week SIDDURIM (n. SIDDUR, a Jewish prayer book). Before you get too congratulatory, let it be known that DRUIDISM would've been more points.

Congratulations to Helen for playing the last remaining unplayed word of 8 in the AEGINST rack, GENISTA. Someone has been reading the writeups!

1st Charles Reinke valiantly continued his efforts to four-peat as club champion, going 3-1 +504. He scored 553 against Helen in the first game, playing LAITIES, FAINTERS, and GAROTTES. If you think three bingos isn't very many for scoring 553 points, I'm pretty sure he also had a 70-point X play. As punishment (or as a reward) for winning by so much, he faced Thomas in the next match, depairing as his opponent opened with AVERAGE. Charles eventually played REWARMED (v. what you do with your leftover Chinese takeout [ed. note: why is Chinese food never as good the next day]), but Thomas also bingoed with RATIONS and NEITHER and ended up winning 477-376. Things improved for Charles in the next game, or maybe they just got way worse for his opponent, anyway, he won 459-254 against Bryan. The star play of that game was the word-of-the-week CYATHIUM (n. the flower head of certain plants, plural CYATHIA). In related news, the club has a new prize where the next person to name their daughter CYATHIA wins four dollars. In the final game, he got a rematch with Thomas and equalized things by winning 483-311. He played TETHERS, REBUILT, and the back-breaking SHADOOF (n. a device used in Egypt for raising water for irrigation, also SHADUF).

2nd Betty Hasselkus edged out Thomas for second place by three spread points, going 3-1 +109. In the first round, she fought her way through a tough board against Sue, eventually winning 320-307 with neither combatant playing a bingo. After that, she lost 314-411 versus Gail, with much of the margin being attributable to Gail's fancy KAIZENS for 101. For reference, that's the first bingo at our club with both a K and a Z since Thomas's KLUTZES four years ago. The next one will be when Betty plays KIBBITZ three weeks from now. In the the third round, Betty had another bingo-less game, this time beating Mary 364-329. Her scoring picked up a lot in the final game, as she won against Helen, 444-286. She played ASSURED and NEITHER early in the game, and must have done some other stuff too because 444 is a lot of points.

3rd Thomas Reinke failed to find three extra points over his four games, and thus came in third at 3-1 +106. He beat Bryan 493-367 in the first round by way of his 100-point double-double out-bingo CITADEL, which turned a close game into a blowout with the addition of Bryan's unplayed Z. Thomas' scoring went down in the next game (and it continued to go down the whole night), but he still beat Charles easily, 477-376. Against Gail, he won 440-389, bingoing with GALLEINS and THEREBY, outdoing Gail's double-blank HEREINTO. His streak of high-scoring wins came to an abrupt end in his rematch against Charles, but that's okay because the extra sympathy he elicited for scoring only 311 points made up for it. Just kidding. No one ever feels bad for Thomas no matter how few points he scores.

1st Thomas Reinke started off the new club season right with his 4-1 +420 record. He opened with a two-on-one versus Betty and Richard where he played three bingos in each game and also won each game (which is a secondary fact to the amount of bingos played). He also played three bingos against Bryan in the second round, in a game where he won 459-438. He got down ARROZES (ARROZ is the Spanish word for rice, don't ask me why it's in the dictionary because I don't know), CATTAIL, and ANDESITE, while Bryan played CRENELS and FRIGHTEN. In the next game he had a close match with Charles, and ended up losing 387-401 while staring at a second consecutive rack of AEGINST. There are 8 bingos in that rack, 7 of which have been played at club, and 0 of which fit on the board. Thomas' luck returned in the final round against Mary, where he scored 475 and played VAMOOSE and TORRENT.

2nd Bryan Benwitz's goal this year is to go 3-1 every night, so it's a good thing that he went 3-1 +342 to prevent his goal from being ruined on the very first week. He had his highest game of the night in the first round, beating Dave 491-341 and playing COURIER and GRODIEST (anagrams DIGESTOR and STODGIER). He came up short against Thomas, 438-459, but did put a scare in his opponent with a late FRIGHTEN. Get it? A late scare? FRIGHTEN? Hah. Continuing on, he played Betty in the third round and won 404-326, countering her bingo of FIRMNESS with IDOLISE. He similarly played only one bingo against Helen, STRAYED, but who needs bingos when you can score a bunch of points in other ways? Remember, the point of Scrabble is not to out-bingo your opponent,  the point is to outscore them. Bingos are pretty fun, though.

3rd Charles Reinke went 3-1 +127, stealing third place from Richard in the final game. He got his loss (presumably his only one of the season) out of the way quickly, losing to Mary 347-440 in the first game. She opened with a double-blank FAINTER, and he never recovered. Well, he did recover, but it took him until after that game was finished to begin doing so. He beat Helen 510-332 in the next round, playing the fancy double-double PLAYLAND (like at McDonald's) for 99 as well as UDOMETER (n. a rain gauge, how appropriate considering all the ones in the area have long since overflowed). Against Thomas, he played COASTING and a defensively-minded CUPELED and won 401-387, preventing his brother from bingoing with his last four bingo-ey racks. In the final match, versus Richard, things were looking grim for him as Richard played MIRAGES and BROADEST and began blocking the board. However, in typical Charles fashion, he pulled a miracle SOFTEST making a bunch of overlaps and won 389-361, seizing third place from Richard and earning this glowing paragraph.

Mark played the word-of-the-week, the incredible nine-letter AUTOCLAVE through an LA on the board. Has anyone told him that he could've played VACUOLATE instead? In other bingo news, the club has now played over 14,000 unique 7/8-letter bingos since we started keeping track 7 years ago. The 25 percent bingo coverage mark is within sight, with only 167 words to go.