1st Thomas Reinke finished with a 3-1 +309 record, celebrating his birthday with a first place finish. Perhaps this will be the year his advanced age starts to take its toll on his Scrabble-playing ability? We can only hope. Anyway, he still seemed fit as a fiddle in the first round, beating Bryan 516-320. That game was marred by his misspelled bingo of OBVOLTUE*. OBVOLUTE was what he was going for, but the letter transposition went unnoticed by either player until a few seconds after it was too late to challenge. In the second round, he had a similarly high-scoring win, beating the returning Richard 524-308 and handing him his only loss of the night. Thomas played MIRRORED out of a rack with three Rs and two blanks, as well as OSSATURE and ORGANDIE (n. a cotton fabric, also ORGANDY). He then faced Charles at hit a significant bump in his road to a perfect night, as he lost big, 323-495. He wisely chose ANTSIER out of the 9 available words in that set of letters, but it was no match for Charles' constant scoring onslaught. In the last game, he faced Charles again, because everyone decided that three games was enough, and won 448-379. His bingos that game were ANTERIOR, GABBIEST, and UNREELS.

2nd Charles Reinke (also celebrating a birthday, what are the odds?) also finished with a 3-1 record, but fell short on spread for first with a +217. He faced James in the first round, winning a close one 419-377, his last play prompting James to remark "that's too many points", a sentiment silently echoed by all in attendance. James did get down the word-of-the-week, NARWHALE, which is an alternate spelling of NARWHAL (n. what appears to be a sea unicorn) in that game. In the next game, he faced Helen, and won only through his timely play of GOVERNED on a tight board. The final was 401-329, Helen's only loss of the night. Charles pushed his record to 3-0 with a 495-323 win against Thomas, bingoing early with TREMOLO and bingoing later with ANTIMINE. He also played the next game against Thomas; since they seem to like playing each other so much, a proposal is currently being drafted to have them form their own "Reinke Scrabble Players Organization", where they are the only two members and are barred from attending clubs of other Scrabble organizations.

3rd Helen Flores came in third with a 3-1 +139 record, beating out Aaron for the coveted final paragraph. Her first game was an entirely bingoless (so what am I supposed to talk about, the scorecard should really have a box for "other high-scoring plays" or something) contest versus Dave K., a game she won 380-319. She lost against the always-tough Charles 329-401, getting down TANGENT, but didn't let that faze her as she won her next game, a 353-281 win over Sue. Helen played RADIATE that game, but no word on whether it was extended to ERADIATE, RERADIATE, IRRADIATE, or TRIRADIATE. She saved her best for last, beating Dave G. in the final round 431-353. Her big play in that game was ENQUIRED for 86 points. If you somehow took that play away but everything else stayed the same (somehow), she would've lost. Somehow.

In other, vaguely-exciting news, Dave K. played one of the new five-letter words, TWERK. That's the first of the longer new words that has been noticed to have been played; if you played something like AQUAFABA but didn't let anyone know, you missed out on possibly getting a mention in the writeup.