Thomas Reinke Boosts Confidence Before Nationals

1st Thomas Reinke now has a decent shot at winning all 31 games of next week's National Scrabble Championship thanks to his perfect 4-0 +376 record at club. All he has to do is conserve that momentum and not use it up while engaging in other tasks, like eating or sleeping. The first step of Thomas' imminent domination was taken against Aaron Bader, with that game ending 458-422 in favor of the twin. Aaron got ORIENTER and TANDEMS (new anagram: DAMNEST) to Thomas' GAYETIES, SLIPPING, and ETHINYLS. Gail Salm employed a more defensive style to try to contain Thomas' high-scoring tendencies; she succeeded in a sense, but still came away with a 336-374 loss. In the category of "consolation prizes", Gail did play the word-of-the-week RAMJETS as her only bingo in that game (Thomas was also limited to the singular MIDAIRS). Thomas then made his most convincing case for being a future national champion when he whomped his brother Charles by an impressive 190-point margin, 550-360. Charles found RESTIVE to prevent the game from turning into an even larger blowout, but his efforts were almost pathetic when compared to his brother' bingo assault: ETERNALS, BONDINGS, SPATTERS, and the nine-letter RETINULAR were more than enough to snag the win. This is the second time RETINULAR has been recorded on a scoresheet; Charles played it three years ago.

2nd Dave Gilligan, going 3-1 +291, did not get any bingos, but he did confirm what we have been suspecting all along, which is that the 50-point bonus of a bingo is actually a smokescreen instituted by undercover Russian operatives to limit the effectiveness of our Scrabble play. So, kudos to Dave for finally having the courage to open his eyes and recognize this deception. He barely came away with a victory, 358-351, against Betty Hasselkus, who scored 82 points for her bingo of POUNDER. A matchup against Gail Salm was somewhat more decisive, ending in a 397-229 Dave victory. However, the "no bingoing" strategy did not work in every game; Dennis Lloyd used his bingo of LUSTIER to take down Dave in a low-scoring 306-336 contest.

3rd Charles Reinke averaged over 500 points in his wins, but his disastrous encounter with his brother relegated him to third place with his 3-1 +147 record. Bryan Benwitz was the first to be subjugated; his match with Charles concluded with the scoresheets reading 481-308. Bryan played TONGUED, but Charles tripled that bingo output with STOLLENS, WEARIEST, and DERIVATE. A subsequent game against Richard Lauder resulted in the highest loss of the evening; Richard scored 445 but still lost by 95 points as Charles scored 540. Surprisingly for such a high-scoring game, both players had just two bingos: OPERATE and BONELIKE for Richard, FETIDLY and HOSTLING for Charles (A HOSTLER is somebody who tends horses, but HOSTLE is not a verb). Charles rounded out his collection of wins with a 486-417 triumph over Peter Schmiedicke. This time, both players had three bingos; Peter got DIATRON, PASTORS (104 points!), and AUDITEE while Charles got RALLIES, AIRBASE, and GALENITE.

Charles' AIRBASE was the only new bingo played this week. Richard did find himself with some extra spending money in his pocket thanks to a triple-triple of RELISTED for 131 points, played against Barb Besadny.