1st Charles Reinke's 3-1 +330 record was good enough in a field where no player went undefeated. He had a bit of a rough start when his first-round matchup against Mark Kenas resulted in a 429-443 defeat; he found OSTRAKON as his only bingo (can also be spelled OSTRACON), while Mark had a pair of high-probability sevens, VASTIER and STANDEE. In round two, Charles withstood three bingos from Ron Malzer (SLANDER, AUTHORS, and STAINERS) to secure a 438-409 victory. Following that tough win, a redo against Mark Kenas resulted in a significantly better outcome for Charles than their first go-around, with Charles taking a decisive 537-361 win thanks to bingos of BEARPAW, SLEEPER, and REFUTED. Charles then closed out the night with a win over the 3-0 Bryan Benwitz, 491-352. Again, Charles three bingos (TAENIAS, TOLLAGES, FUNSTER) were crucial to his triumph.

2nd Lynda Finn came off a strong performance at the previous weekend's Greeneye tournament in Minnesota to finish at 3-1 +149. Like Charles above, Lynda suffered defeat in round one, taken down by Richard Lauder 381-448. Richard flexed his bingo knowledge with DELETION, PEDALOS, and OUSTERS, while Lynda had INGESTED. Lynda's fortunes turned dramatically in round two as she vaniquished Sara McLaughlin 450-325, getting DEFINITE and OVERFIT as her bonus plays. Two more bingos, RESITES and ETESIAN were in store for Ron Malzer, and Lynda's reward was a prominent W on her (misplaced but later recovered) scoresheet, 397-351. ETESIAN was just played by Lynda last week, and has now been played at our club 44 times since 2011, the most of any single bingo - a true testament to the extreme likelihood of having AEEINST all on your rack at the same time (AIRIEST, EASIEST, ATONIES, and ERASION round out the top five, and we don't hit an eight-letter word until AERATION, RELATION, and RETAINER tied for 19th place). Back to the Scrabble action, Lynda finished her night (and secured her spot in the writeup) with a 407-362 win against Dennis Lloyd, despite getting outbingoed two to one (Lynda's DISCORD vs. Dennis' ALIENIST and word-of-the-week SUAVITY).

3rd Bryan Benwitz averaged a bit lower than his recent standard with "just" 430 per game, but finished at 3-1 +105 regardless. He got his big score out of the way early when he clobbered Dennis Lloyd 480-321. Both players had two bingos (Bryan: BOOTEES, BORNITIC; Dennis: LEERIEST, SCIMITAR), so the large gulf in scores must be explainable by some other point-scoring mechanism. Bryan slowed things down a bit with a smaller, but still solid, 429-364 victory over Richard Lauder, where the odd-looking LUNGEING was one of Bryan's two bingos (the other being LATERIZE), and a natural ASSHATS on Richard's rack was sadly not played, to the dismay of juvenile humorists everwhere. Bryan improved to 3-0 with a 457-437 win over Thomas Reinke; Thomas' 131-point COZIEST wasn't quite enough, although it might have been if he hadn't allowed Bryan to get away with ENRAGER*. A perfect 4-0 was prevented by Charles Reinke, who enacted some sort of twin-based revenge on Bryan to hand him a 352-491 loss.

As mentioned earlier, Dennis' SUAVITY was word of the week, but Sara's VITREOUS, Dennis' SCIMITAR, and Charles' BEARPAW, among others, were all candidates.