Blog

Bryan Benwitz brings the pain and the wins all categories, highest finish at 3-1, highest average at 416, held his opponents to an average of 320, had the most bingos at 2 per game, and had the two highest game scores at 474 and 463. 

Lynda Finn finished second and played the nine letter work RESOLUTER, after earlier in the game trying the phony nine retriples* in the same spot.

Lessons Learned: If You're Playing Andy Bohnsack, You Might As Well Just Give Up

1st Andy Bohnsack was the only player not to experience the crushing, chest-constricting agony of loss, going 4-0 +396.  Three of his winning scores were rather pedestrian by his standards: 442, 442, and 408.  The fourth was anything but pedestrian, a 574-329 bomb dropped on the unwitting Bryan Benwitz.  Bryan actually outbingoed Andy, playing three bingos (AERATION, AMNIOTE, and CALORIES) to Andy's two (GREEDIER and ATTRITS).  The vast gulf in scores can be chalked up to a) Multiple 60+ point power-tile plays and b) the fact that GREEDIER was a triple-triple.

2nd Charles Reinke went 3-1 +428, a spread large enough to beat out three others who also went 3-1.  He had three bingos in each of his three wins, but only got two in his 405-442 loss versus gold-medal-winner Andy Bohnsack.  Two of his wins could be classified as blowouts: 483-309 against Lynda Finn and 509-287 against Matt Rust.   INSIDERS, PATINAE, and ENDOSTEA were played in the former while COINFER (v. to infer jointly, or a noun meaning "a misspelling of CONIFER"), BEELINES, and EPHORAL (adj. pertaining to an ephor, an ancient Greek magistrate) were played in the latter.

3rd Richard Lauder's 3-1 +306 record was impressive enough to garner third place honors.  In a shrewd move that only a veteran Scrabbler could pull off, Richard cleverly conserved all of his luck for the last game of the night: his first three games were all under the 400-point threshhold, but his last game was a whopping 569 against Helen Flores.  In that game, Richard played a dizzying five bingos, showing off decades of word study: SATINETS, EPIDOTES, GENEROUS, BROODER, and CEILAGE.  Helen got down INSULTER, bringing the total amount of bingos in the game to six.

The two other 3-1 players were Chris Vergeront and Thomas Reinke.  Chris and Charles shared bingo king honors with 11 each, while Thomas played the word of the week, VOLPLANE (v. to glide in an airplane). 

Harwinder Dowd Learns the Importance of Spread

1st Harwinder Dowd claimed first place by only 26 spread points, going 1-1 +12.  Her win came against June Scott, 371-313.

2nd Dave Gilligan also learned the importance of spread, finishing with a final record of 1-1 -14.  He earned his first win at club by beating Harwinder Dowd 373-327, playing the word SPOOLER along the way.  SPOOLER has three anagrams: LOOPERS, POOLERS, and RESPOOL.

For the second straight week, a new player made an appearance at our club.  Abhishek Anurag played in the expert division, and while he didn't win a game, he got two nice bingos: NUTTERS and SLOVENLY. 

Bryan and Ruth Ann met up for a triple-header at Hy-Vee on Sunday.  Bryan won the series 2-1, displaying his bingo-finding prowess with a four-bingo, 478-295 in the first game.