1st Thomas Reinke topped a field of six players with his 3-1 +391 final record. His journey to a first-place finish was made significantly less arduous when his first-round match against Bryan Benwitz ended with a 549-337 score in Thomas' favor. Bryan was uncharacteristically held to zero bingos while Thomas coolly plopped down bonus plays of CROSSED, PALAVERS, DONATIVE, and METAPHOR. Thomas had a similar amount of success against Francesca Lazio, winning 471-272 thanks to finds of AEROFOIL and SCREWING. Francesca did play a bingo of RETINAS to somewhat limit the damage. The sole loss on Thomas' scorescard was handed to him by none other than his own brother, and it was a high-scoring one too, 461-493 (although that is somewhat expected when using the more inclusive international lexicon). This time, it was Charles' turn to play four bingos: CHANTERS, UREDINIA, GRATUITY, and the nine-letter FRITTERED. Thomas had RANKLED, an apt word to describe his mood after being denied a perfect 4-0 outing.

2nd Bryan Benwitz also went 3-1 with a smaller, but still sizable, +290 spread total. That spread total would have been significantly more sizable were it not for the devastating round one loss against Thomas Reinke, detailed above. However, things improved signifcantly for Bryan after that initial setback. His 406-321 win over Charles Reinke, achieved via three bingos of CATTIES, ANEURINS, and SOPPIER, continued his run of strong play against that particular opponent: Bryan has now won six of his last seven against Charles. Bryan also made (relatively) easy work of grizzled Scrabble veteran Richard Lauder, emerging victorious in their encounter, 452-361. The combatants had two bingos apiece: EXTERNAL and INTRUDE for Richard, IRONIES and LEISTERS for Bryan.

On a more obscure note, Richard's bingo of INEDITA, played against Tara Kadium, marks the first time that particular word has been played at our club since modern record-keeping began in 2011. This is interesting because INEDITA is one of the most probable seven-letter words in the dictionary (that is, it is more likely than most to appear on your rack when you draw seven random tiles out of a full bag). To compare, the similarly-probable AIRLINE and DENARII have been played nine and five times, respectively. Thus concludes this week's utterly meaningless (but possibly slightly interesting to a select crowd of Scrabble nerds) bingo report.