SHAYLA DUNN VICIOUSLY VANQUISHES FIVE FOES IN A ROW

1st Shayla Dunn's 5-0 +661 performance left no doubt as to who the best Scrabble player in the room was that night.  A gigantic 544 point game in the first round over Mary Becker wasn't enough for Shayla, who proceeded to calmly rack up scores of 485 vs. Lynda Finn and 507 vs. club champion Thomas Reinke.  That last game was especially sweet as she played the triple-triple ENFORCES through Thomas' foolishly opened R.  Shayla's undefeated night puts her within one percentage of point of Thomas on this year's leaderboard.

2nd Thomas Reinke had a mere three wins and a scrawny +97 point spread, totals which nonetheless clinched him second place among the experts.  He won a high-scoring game versus his bro Charles 477-444 and also handed Peter Schmiedicke a loss 461-396, playing the nice double-double MISBEGIN in the latter.

3rd with three wins, two losses and a +221 was Andy Bohnsack.  Usually a player scoring 400 is the winner, but not so in Andy's 422-450 loss to Lynda Finn.  His MISPAGED VIBRIONS were not enough to overcome Lynda's EELIEST BULLION GOITERS.  He did enjoy a 428-267 game against new player John, playing the useful EPINASTY (from a rack of AEINSTY) to further his quest for victory.

SUE GOLDSTEIN ONCE AGAIN ATTAINS TOP SPOT IN INTERMEDIATES

1st Sue Goldstein bounced back from a five point loss in the first round (vs. Barb Besadny 374-379) to win her next three games, going 3-1 +129.  She got two nice bingos on the night, PIGLETS and DUSTIER.

2nd Barb Besadny had an identical record to Sue, falling short just on spread, 3-1 +87.  Soundly beating Janet Greisel by an even hundred points, 401-301, was the highlight of her evening, marred only by the phony she played in that game, "meatish" (ATHEISM is the valid word in those letters).

3rd Betty Hasselkus' 2-2 -75 performance netted her third place in the intermediate group.  A one point nail-biter win over Helen Flores, 328-327, didn't do much to help her spread, but that W sure looks nice.

We had fifteen players show up to pelt tiles at each other.  Thankfully, the only injuries sustained were some bruised egos.  Andy Bohnsack sat upon the glorious and storied throne of Bingo King this week, thus inscribing his name into the immortal tablets of legendry as he put down twelve bingo plays in his five games.  This night was an especially bad night for phonies, with seven illusory words failing to get rightfully removed from the board: serifing (SERIFED is good though), sorries (ORRISES), soothen (SMOOTHEN and SOOTHER combined?) inulose (ELUSION or INULASE), bargers, borites (ORBIEST or BARITES), and meatish (ATHEISM).  Shayla Dunn, in addition to being undefeated, also played the word of the week with the beautiful JONQUILS, one of the few words with both a J and a Q (JEQUIRITY, anyone?).  Shayla also got down another Q bingo, QUASHES, but we can only have one word of the week.