Charles Reinke Leads Diminished Group of Diehards

1st Charles Reinke, cooped up inside and watching the beautiful day elapse right in front of his eyes, finished 3-1 +374 for first place among a group of just ten players. He scored the only 500-point game of the evening when he stomped Dave Gilligan by a score of 553-266. His three bingos in that game were AMNESIAC (don't remember the definition), FIRELIT, and BOASTER. Dave was unfortunately held bingoless. A contest against Peter Schmiedicke was much closer at 457-395; again, Charles had three bingos: EROTICS, UNIDEAED (adj. lacking ideas), and RINGSTER. This time, however, Charles had to contend with some bingos from his opponent, namely NEATEST and DIATRON. Only Thomas Reinke could muster the firepower to defeat the eventual first-place finisher, winning that game 448-426. In a turning of fate, Thomas was the one to get three bingos: EMULSOID, MEWLING, and PROTEAN. Charles got down PANIERS and TRYSTER. Thomas has now won fifteen of the last twenty contests between these two.

2nd Thomas Reinke went 3-1 +246, easily outdoing the other 3-1 finisher for second place. He played a low-scoring game against Peter Schmiedicke which finally ended in Thomas' favor, 366-319. Peter played INDORSE to Thomas' nice find of SAYONARA. The thirty bonus "style points" really came in handy on that one. Thomas recovered from the sting of that low score by roundly defeating Helen Flores 499-257. ANTHESIS for 94 points inflicted most of the damage, but AINSELL (Scottish dialect for "one's own self") wasn't bad either. Thomas' singular loss came at the ruthless tile-drawing hand of Andy Bohnsack, 387-452. The bingo count was even at two apiece: SNAILED and DIVULSED for Andy, UNDELETE and ELOIGNS for Thomas. With the win, Andy pulled closer to evening up the lifetime series: it stands now at 37 wins for Thomas, 36 for Andy. Of course, by "lifetime", we mean "since 2011". For all we know, Andy won fifty straight before that.

3rd Andy Bohnsack had a self-described "sad" 3-1 performance with only a +57 cumulative. Things started off badly with a 444-377 game against Dave Gilligan, a game only made respectable by Andy's 70-point out-bingo of LEARNER. Dave, meanwhile, bingoed consistently throughout the game with ERASION, WETSUIT, and SADDENS (an appropriate word to describe Andy's mental state at the time the word was played). Things began to look up for Andy in the next game as he defeated Gail Salm 411-353. Gail played DRIVELS and WILIEST; Andy countered with RONDELS and RAINIER. Fingernails everywhere were bitten and bloodied during Andy's next game against Bryan Benwitz, which ended up with just a one-point difference in scores, 422-421. Bryan got down TAGLINE early, but Andy clawed his way back with GRANTORS, POINTES, and DEAMEANS. A win is a win, but it certainly didn't help Andy's spread very much.

Peter Schmiedicke played the nine-letter DEBUTANTE (off of DE on the board) for Word of the Week. Two bingos from the new dictionary were played: Charles' RINGSTER (a member of a price-fixing ring) and Thomas' UNDELETE (v. to cancel the deletion of).