NOTICE: during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Madison Scrabble Club will not be holding in-person meetings. Check our Facebook page for information about virtual gatherings.
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.
Club Results 3/11
Posted 3/13/2020
Club Results 3/4
Posted 3/6/2020
Club Results 2/26
Posted 2/28/2020
Club Results 2/19
Posted 2/21/2020