Fifteen Bingos in Four Games Sounds Like it Could Be a Record

1st Charles Reinke averaged 511 points and played fifteen bingos; with such outlandish totals, it's no wonder that he compiled a perfect 4-0 record with a +664 spread. Only Bryan Benwitz was able to prevent Charles from getting down four bingos, giving up just three of them, and consequently he was the closest to beating him, losing by a respectable score of 404-431. Charles scored comfortably above 500 in the rest of his games, his highest score being 548 against the newly-returned Richard Lauder, who scored 303 while lamenting the fact that he ever left the warm climes of Arizona. Charles' bingos in that one were TESSERAE (anagram ESTERASE), OPERATE, INVERITY, and ENAMOURS; Richard played ETERNALS and PLAIDED. A final, fraternal matchup that pitted Charles against lifetime archfoe Thomas Reinke saw Charles easily achieve victory, 520-397. The THREE nine-letter bingos on the board might be some kind of record too; Thomas had FLATTENER, while Charles found ARGUFIERS and CHARITIES. Oh yeah, and Charles also got started on another winning streak, with the win over his brother being his tenth in a row.

2nd Lynda Finn didn't quite average 500 or get fifteen bingos, but her 456 per-game average and her eight bingos were still well above her usual numbers, and her 3-1 +274 final record is nothing to sneeze at. The full extent of her Scrabble prowess was on display against Dave Gilligan, whom she beat by a score of 506-349. OUTSWAM for 105 big points was not nearly enough firepower for Dave, who had to contend with Lynda's three bingos of ANDESITE, AERADIO (one of the highest-probability new words) and a nice find of NONENTRY. Lynda showed neither mercy nor pity while dismantling the tough Bryan Benwitz, beating him 463-275 with bingos of TALENTS and GILLIES (Bryan had EDEMATA). The one loss reflected on Lynda's scorecard came in the first round against Thomas Reinke, 364-493, but Lynda at least found ISOCHOR (ISOCHORE is good as well) to somewhat mitigate the damage.

3rd Gail Salm went 3-1 -33, proving that you don't need to have a positive spread to finish in the top three. She played the word of the week BEESWING in a 335-310 win over Helen Flores, a word which almost drew a challenge when it was mentally pronounced as "Bee Swing" rather than "Bee's Wing". The bingo-related accolades were not over for Gail as she scored a cool five bucks for her triple-triple of ROTATING in a 405-371 win againast Aaron Bader. Her other bingos in that one were TZARIST and STONIER; Aaron had PINBONES. However, a 304-461 loss to Bryan Benwitz obliterated the spread points she had been carefully building up, and a 412-347 victory over Richard Lauder (playing ORIENTED and READIEST in her winning effort) wasn't enough to dig herself out of that hole.