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Are We Even Surprised that Thomas Reinke Went Undefeated?

1st Thomas Reinke easily toppled all opponents who dared to stand in his way, finishing with a dominant 5-0 +588 record. All of his games were successes, but the two greatest successes happened simultaneously as he defeated both Buffy Hogan and Dennis Lloyd in a two-on-one match that probably should have been expanded to four-on-one just to make things more fair. A 479-330 win over buffy saw Thomas get down MANDORLA, CRATONS, and SNAILED; that performance was echoed in a 496-274 victory against Dennis wherein Thomas played SCALENI, KERNITES, and WAGONER as his bingos. If one could find a flaw in Thomas' immaculate show of Scrabble supremacy, it would be that his eighteen-game streak of scoring over 400 was broken when he narrowly bested his brother Charles, 341-330. The unusually low-scoring game also broke Charles' streak of twelve such games. Each twin was allowed one and only one bingo: REJOICES for Charles, TONLETS for Thomas.

2nd Dave Kinzer enjoyed easily the best night of his currently short Scrabble career, playing three games without experiencing the disappointment of a loss and averaging 408 points per game while doing it. However, the entire night was almost derailed in the first round when Dave escaped with an uncomfortably close 387-386 victory versus Mary Becker. It was the only game where Dave went without a bingo, and Mary's GROWTHS for 85 points was almost too much to overcome. This close win was followed by a win with a significantly larger cushion, 423-295 against Sue Goldstein. Dave was aided by a high-scoring bingo of TALKERS for 83. To round out his night of perfection, Dave bested Susan Vergeront 415-328, thanks in part to a nice find of GENTEEL. Then, having nothing left to prove, Dave vanished into the night without giving another player a (probably futile) chance to disrupt his perfect record.

3rd Aaron Bader nudged up his roughly 66% winning percentage on the year with a 3-1 +270 record. He played the highest-scoring bingo of the night, a 116-point WASHUPS, in a 457-273 win against Gail Salm. When your bingos score that much, it's okay if that's the only one you get in the game. His most closely-fought contest (although it wasn't really all that close) came against Joe Horowitz, 451-386. Again, Aaron got only one bingo (ENCODES), but scored enough points in other ways to negate Joe's ARRESTER and GUITARS. Paradoxically, it was one of Aaron's two-bingo games that he lost: a matchup against Thomas Reinke ended unfavorably for Aaron, 486-349, despite his M-themed bingos of MORENESS and METRIST. Thomas had TADPOLE and REJOICED in response. The lifetime series between the two now stands at 13 wins for Thomas, 11 for Aaron.

Roughly a year after we started playing with the updated dictionary, three new bingos were played: TRANNIE (Charles), MANDORLA (Thomas), and RADIOES (Lynda). In the category of utterly pointless minutia, there were four bingos played containing a J after only three such bingos were played in the entire month of February.

Bryan Benwitz Outwitz His Opposition

1st Bryan Benwitz went 4-0 with an average of 462 to claim the coveted "first paragraph in the writeup" prize. His path to a perfect night was nearly obstructed in the first game, as the pairing gods decided to test his mettle with a matchup against club leader Charles. Bryan perservered, and managed to squeak out a high-scoring 460-456 win thanks in part to his double-U find of URINOUS. In the second game, Helen's duplicate-letter-laden SETTEES was no match for another nice Bryan bingo, BILOBATE (adj. having two lobes). Bryan continued along the path to a perfect night with a win against Mary, 458-322, playing the odd-looking IDONEITY (n. the state of being idoneous (suitable)). Club historians will remember when former club member and noted odd-looking word player John O'Laughlin played that word against this writer, and this writer challenged it and felt like a doofus when it came back acceptable. Bryan's perfect night came to a perfect end against Andy, with him tallying his lowest score of the evening, but still winning, 449-388. And so it was that Bryan, by virtue of being the only undefeated player, earned this first paragraph in the writeup.

2nd Charles Reinke somehow saw his club-leading 80% winning percentage on the year decrease with a vaguely disappointing 3-1 record. The aforementioned close lose to Bryan could have easily sent Charles on a downward spiral culminating in an 0-4 record; however, he pulled himself together to win his next three games to salvage the night. A close contest during the second game this time ended in his favor, 429-420, with his three bingos of LANEWAYS, REALIZED, and VASTIEST overcoming Peter's BELADIES (v. BELADY, to apply the title of lady to), COENURI, and ERGATES. Emboldened by vicotry, he followed up these two tight games with two comfortable wins, 537-331 against Gail and 458-283 against Mary.

3rd Andy Bohnsack overcame his tardiness to go 3-1 +216. A 456-354 first round game against Buffy saw him play OATCAKE (n. probably some sort of ambrosial combination of oatmeal and a pancake), STRIPPER, and GASOLINE. His bingo-cannon continued warming up against Barb, with him playing STEROID and ANISOLES. Fully primed, his bingo-cannon went off, bombarding Thomas in the form of four bingos, OUTREAD, SAXATILE (adj. living among rocks), REDDISH, and ACRIDEST. Though the bulk of its power was used up, his bingo-cannon managed to weakly lob two more bingos in the general direction of Bryan, DISCRETE and BANDITS.

Two new bingos were played this week: LETOUTS by Thomas and LENDINGS by Peter. Mary played the word of the week, DAMASKS.

Thomas Reinke Receives Visions, Wins Scrabble Games

1st Thomas Reinke looked into the future, saw the list of Scrabblers that he was destined to play, and thought to himself, "I can probably beat all those dudes, and I say dudes because they are all, in fact, of the dude gender", before unbidden visions of his dismantling of said dudes invaded his mind. With a sense of inevitability and a feeling of horror at the realization that his actions were not truly his own, he won his first game against Bryan, 479-347, aided by his "find" of AGATIZES (v. to convert into agate). This large-ish victory gave way to three tight contests in a row, with him winning by increasingly nail-biting margins of 21, 5, and 2 against Peter, Charles, and Andy. A timely "find" of LONGTIME was the difference against Peter, a timely endgame phony of (phony redacted) earned him the victory against Charles, and his opponent's "fourth round melancholy" during a tough endgame propelled him over Andy.

2nd Charles Reinke was denied yet another perfect evening by his eternal nemesis Thomas, but his 3-1 +262 record was still good for second place. You know what they say, though: if you're not first, you're last. Since we don't reserve paragraphs for last-place finishers, I think this particular section is finished.

3rd Andy Bohnsack came in third thanks to the mysterious inner-workings of the club website, which proclaims his 3-2 record to be better than Dennis' 2-1 record. Andy sustained a drubbing at the hands of suddenly-extremely-bingo-prone Peter in a two-on-one in the first round, 313-537. Never one to give up, he showed impressive resilience to beat his other opponent, Joe, 474-338, while playing the appropriate NEWBIES. A second-round duel against Buffy also ended in his favor, with him playing PROTEASE and SLIDDEN, an apparent past-participle of SLID. He concluded his three-game mini winning streak by prevailing over Dennis, playing the seasonally-appropriate SKIABLE and the never-appropriate-because-it's-not-a-word DISHORT. Kind reminder to club members: if you don't mark your phonies with quotes, the stats-entering person gets very confused and upset.

Extra bonus tidbit: relative newcomer Joe Horowitz achieved the rare "bingo-bango-bongo-bungo" in his game against Bryan, playing SPARING, ENTAILS, TWINKLED, and DETAILER over four consecutive turns.

New bingos: EGOTIZES (Peter), AIRBASES (Gail), AIRSOME (Bryan). Buffy's nice find of CHUTNEYS was chosen as word of the week, for no other reason that that the writer is very hungry right now.