Aaron Bader Banishes Foes to Nether Realm

1st Aron Bader dominated the evening from start to finish, going 5-0 +526. Things seemed to be off to a rough start in a two-on-one against Lynda Finn and Gail Salm, with both Lynda and Gail bingoing on their first turns, but Aaron reversed his fortunes through sheer willpower (and tile-drawing technique) to win both. Following that triumph, he held the high-scoring Charles Reinke to 313 points while scoring 393 himself, all despite getting outbingoed two to one (Aaron had WETTEST; Charles had ANVILTOP and CENTRALS). Andy Bohnsack fared only slightly better than Charles did, losing 336-425 to the unstoppable Aaron machine, but he at least played the word of the week, HERSTORY, to lessen the blow of the loss. To wrap up his perfect evening, Aaron took down Bryan Benwitz 470-357 thanks to bingos of ADROITER and BARTERED, proving conclusively that he would never again lose a game if he didn't have all those Collins words rattling around in his skull.

2nd Lynda Finn went 4-1 +363, her only loss being to eventual first-place finisher Aaron Bader. Her best game was a 450-293 win over Gail Salm where she succeeded in preventing the bingo-oriented Gail from getting down any bonus plays. Lynda had two of them herself, the high-probability TONEARMS (anagrams STOREMAN, MONSTERA, and ONSTREAM) and INSTEAD (too many anagrams to enumerate; look them up yourself). A two-on-one match versus Sue Goldstein and Dave Gilligan was successful in much the same way as Aaron's two-on-one; a 398-314 win over Sue saw just one bingo of BASTARDS, but Lynda had three bingos (MOISTENS, ALIENEES, and CUPOLAS) to beat Dave 438-364. Lynda then took down a high-flying Helen Flores, who had just beaten BOTH Reinkes in succession, by a score of 423-313.

3rd Thomas Reinke went 3-2 +434 and finishing with a club-leading 464 per-game average. Falling victim for Bryan Benwitz' penchant for bingoing at inopportunte moments, Thomas lost his first game 432-422. Bryan's late game PRONOTA, in addition to finds of LEADSMEN and the nine-letter CHINTZIER through HI on the board, were just enough to beat out Thomas' FERMION and EXCLUDE. Thomas's two-on-one excursion was not as successful as Aaron's or Lynda's; he beat Betty Hasselkus handily, 497-239, but fell to Helen Flores 401-426. Helen found her chances were helped by matching Thomas' bingo total, as both players had two such plays: SPITING and RETREAT for Helen, MISERERE and YEASTING for Thomas. Rebounding strongly from that disappointment, Thomas released the full power of his Scrabble might upon an unwitting Andy Bohnsack, and won their game 539-408. Andy did play DENARII and STODGIER, but when Thomas bingos four times (RATTENER, SWAGMAN, REALIZER, CAPTURED) a win is rather unlikely.