1st Bryan Benwitz stood peerless at the summit of Mount Scrabble (not a real mountain), finishing ahead of fourteen other combatants with a 4-0 +429 record. He picked up a huge amount of spread early as he clobbered James Rollins, 537-291. In the midst of the chaos, James got down ORGANISE, but Bryan had BLUECAP, REWRITE, and EVENTIDE. In round two, Bryan was outbingoed by Ed Nawrocki two to one, but came out ahead in the only stat that matters, "points scored", as he had 395 points to Ed's 366. Playing club win% leader Thomas Reinke in round three, Bryan gained some ground in the nascent club championship race with a big 466-354 win. Bryan's bold phony of UNSNARE* was certainly a display of (justified) force, as were his valid bingos of VERSION and INLAYERS. It's interesting to note that Thomas played that same phony of UNSNARE* against Bryan back in 2023 (also unchallenged), which makes it feel like we're entering some unstoppable cycle of retribution. Bryan capped off his perfect record by defeating John Bialek 438-396 in a game where Bryan's triple-triple of SHEENIES for 149 points (just the year's third 3x3 after 23 such plays last year) was the clear turning point.

2nd Charles Reinke went 4-1 +474 and had a club-leading thirteen bingos (although Ed's eight bingos in three games was actually a higher per-game bingo average). Charles inserted himself into the consolation bracket early with a 440-493 loss to Thomas Reinke - a phony of BUNTIES* (BUNTIER# is good in Collins) didn't move the needle enough, so maybe he should have played more phonies. He got back on track with a 439-390 win over Dave Kinzer, needing every bit of his three bingos (CHEVRONS, PASHMINA, PACKAGER) to pull it out. Playing two-on-one in round three, Charles cruised in both games, defeating John Bialek 469-281 and Andy Bohnsack 534-291. A 129-point HORRIFY against Andy was quite high-scoring as far as seven-letter words go, but that success was annulled by a second phony, this one being OVERSPAN* (OUTSPAN is good). Charles completed his comeback tour with a revenge win against Thomas Reinke, 422-375, getting IGNAROES# and SERENATA to Thomas' OARLESS.

3rd Helen Flores bingoed just three times, but was able to conjure up points from other sources, as proven by her 3-1 +117 record. A nice bingo of TEAZLES for 81 was able to propel her to a 359-337 win over Lynda Finn in round one (commit the following to memory: TEAZLES, TEAZELS, TEASELS, but no TEASLES*). Helen followed that up with a bingoless 383-299 win against Dora Kilburn (who got down REHEATS to make the final score a bit closer). Helen's single loss was to Steve Hartsman, 350-388; Helen did score higher than her yearly average and she also held Steve to a lower score than his yearly average, so things could have gone worse. Helen's fourth game was also her best, as she cracked 400 points to beat Dave Kinzer 410-361, finding MANGERS while Dave had WEARIEST.

Bryan's BLUECAP was word of the week, while Lynda's STIRFRY* was "inspired phony of the week" (not a real award, but it could be).