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1st Andy Bohnsack fully dominated from start to finish, ending at 4-0 +558 and holding his opponents to an average of 317 per game. He made easy work of Steve Hartsman in round one, winning 428-287 thanks to ARIDNESS and GLIMMER. In round two, Andy upped his winning margin, beating Dave Kinzer by 185 points, 512-327. Andy got down TERRIES, VENDERS, and PELICAN, but at least Dave found word-of-the-week WAVELETS for style points. Another big win came against Carol Ormand; STRAFING, SCALPERS, and the nine-letter ALIENATED (more style points!) were Andy's bingos in that one. Cementing Andy's undefeated evening was a 429-383 victory against Bryan Benwitz, wherein Andy took a slight break from bingoing (playing just one: KNEELING) but took no breaks at all from his general inclination towards winning games of Scrabble.

2nd Thomas Reinke averaged 490 points per game (which seems cool until you look at the stats and see that he averaged 503 two weeks ago) and went 3-1 +411. Utilizing the tried-and-true tactic of "sandbagging", Thomas lost his first game of the night, 454-459 against Mark Kenas. Mark had two nice finds of PONYTAIL and CIRRIPED; sadly, CIRRIPED was never extended into CIRRIPEDE. Thomas came back from that loss to defeat Lynda Finn 534-323, bingoing with ATTAINED, SEXTAINS, and TEMPORAL. In round three, Thomas evened things up with Mark, winning their rematch 513-431 with bingos of RESCALE, LINOCUT, and GRANFERS#. The bingoing continued unabated into the final round, as Thomas found three more bingos (CAROTENE, UNEASILY, SALLIES) to take down Sara McLaughlin, 459-336.

3rd Bryan Benwitz continued his streak of strong play by again finishing at 3-1, this time with a +221 spread. He outdueled Lynda Finn in round one, finding ERECTILE and MATURATE vs. Lynda's ALIENERS and FANCIEST for a 432-373 win. He picked up another win in round two, making good use of power tiles in his bingos (ANXIETY, JAROSITE) for a 456-328 victory against Helen Flores. The worrisome upward trend in Bryan's scores continued as he downed Steve Hartsman by a score of 470-390, getting RACINOS, TRASHIER, and DINETTE to Steve's SEDARIM and VIBRATES. That worrisome upward trend mentioned in the previous sentence was abruptly halted by Andy Bohnsack in the final round, as Bryan lost 393-429.

1st Charles Reinke was the only undefeated player, going 4-0 +319 and averaging 473 per game. He prevailed in round one against Andy Bohnsack, 497-343, holding his bingo-oriented opponent to just one bingo (the awkward-looking DIGITISE) while getting three for himself: REREMIND, FONDLERS, and SOBRIETY. Switching to the Collins lexicon, Charles took advantage of all the extra words by playing STOITER#, UNLOOKED#, and AMUSETTE# to beat Mark Kenas 542-424 (Mark had LOITERS and MASOOLA#+). After that point, Charles turned down his bingo output just a tad (to his opponents' relief), but this didn't interrupt his winning ways (to his opponents' non-relief): he beat Lynda Finn 430-386 and Mark (again) 424-421, playing one bingo in each game (ENDPOINT and ATEBRINS#).

2nd Dave "King Kinz" Kinzer followed up his 2-1 performances each of the previous two weeks with a new-and-improved 3-1 +147 outing. Holding three of his four opponents below 300 points, Dave had by far the lowest opponent average of the night at 327. In the first round, Dave had a nice game against second-timer Ed Nawrocki, winning 415-292 thanks to a bingo of DISTRACT (Ed found GREATER to counter). The next game saw scoring levels take a precipitous drop, and while we can all agree that scoring more points is more fun than scoring fewer points, there's still some minimum amount of fun to be had in a winning effort, fun which belonged to Dave as he pulled out the win over Helen Flores, 309-278. Dave faced off against Andy Bohnsack in round three, and sadly let Andy's Halloweenish phony of DEMONIFY* slip by him in a 316-447 loss, dashing hopes of that elusive perfect record. Happily, two bingos (TOUSELED*, TILAPIA) led to a big win against Carol Ormand, 413-327, enough to vault Dave ahead of other 3-1 finishers for second place on the weekly standings.

3rd Thomas Reinke went 3-1 +140 against some of the toughest customers that the club has to offer. He dropped into the losers' bracket quickly with a 338-450 loss to Mark Kenas, who casually dropped CENTAGE#, EXPANDS, and DIABETIC to Thomas' singular RENNASE. Collins-lexicon tendencies didn't quite wear off in time for round two, as Thomas scored a 464-393 win against Bryan Benwitz partially thanks to a phony-but-exceptionally-wordlike PLIOSAUR* (good in CSW). His other bingos of DUALITY, LEMONIER, and BANTIES were perfectly valid. The bingo frenzy continued with four more bingos (JEOPARD, NITHERED#, FUNNIEST, LINGIER) to get a revenge win against Mark, 463-401 (for his part, Mark found AMASSER and the nice GLUTAMIC#). A productive night of Scrabble ended with Thomas being Andy Bohnsack 510-391, laying down IVORIES and PEYOTLS to Andy's INTERNEE, PIEHOLES, and STONIER.

Helen's GUNWALES was word of the week because bingoing with a U and a W is always commendable. (Ron Malzer's UNBOWED back in early August is the next-most-recent UW bingo)

1st Thomas Reinke was top dog for the second straight week, going 4-0 +569 and averaging 503 points per game. A 548-271 win against Carol Ormand got him off to a good start; her NOTATES was dwarfed by his TEMPING, GORILLAS, and nine-letter DEIONIZED. Thomas continued to pummel his opponents, showing few (if any) outward signs of remorse as he thrashed Mark Kenas 495-368 (playing ANTIRAPE and GLORIFY) and Andy Bohnsack 476-350 (playing SPORULE and ENURETIC). It wasn't until the final round where Thomas was substantially challenged, but he was still able to get another win off Mark, 494-455, bingoing with ANTARAS#, ACINOSE, and UTILISER, while Mark had TOUKING#, FORELIE#, and MANLIEST.

2nd Richard Lauder also went 4-0 but with a more staid spread total of +113. Game one against Steve Hartsman was a subdued affair, as neither player bingoed; in the end, Richard pulled out a 351-327 win. The action picked up a bit as Richard was able to fend off Andy Bohnsack in round two, 387-380. Richard got OUTRANGE and PUNKIEST, while Andy had ENTRANTS and ZLOTIES (one of many plurals of the Polish currency ZLOTY - the others are ZLOTE, ZLOTYS, and ZLOTYCH). The trend of too-close-to-be-comfortable wins continued as Richard felled Bryan Benwitz 389-374, outbingoing Bryan two to one (MANLIER, URINATED vs. STROBES). Showing remarkable consistency, Richard again score in the 380 range as he put the finishing touch on his perfect evening by defeating Sara McLaughlin 386-319.

3rd Bryan Benwitz went 3-1 +283, but with only four bingos (well below his yearly average of 2.07 per game), one feels that he could have done much more damage than he actually did. Bryan did not bingo in a 406-319 win against Helen Flores, while Helen was able to get down TAGLINE (but not before an appropriate amount of mourning for an unplayable GELATIN). In round two, Bryan overcame Dave Kinzer's 88-point PLAYABLE with his own 76-point EMPTIED to win 408-352. A 374-389 loss to Richard Lauder was a temporary setback, but Bryan made up that lost ground (and then some) by taking Andy Bohnsack to school, 487-332. Bryan found DISOMIC and COOKERS to Andy's LABIATE and ANTIRED.

We welcomed newcomer Ed Nawrocki to our ranks. He scored his first-ever club win with a nice 429-215 win over Kelsey Stanczak, thanks to bingos of AIRTIME and SANDERS. We were also happy to have seasoned tournament player Mary Parrish join us from out west.