Andy Bohnsack Wallops Scrabble Players for Fun and Profit

1st Andy Bohnsack went 4-1 +434 to take first place in the expert group.  He suffered an upset defeat against Barb Besadny to start the evening, 359-412, but won the rest of them with ease.  Charles Reinke's 13-game winning streak was snapped when Andy crushed him 444-311, deploying such words as TELECOMS, TULADIS, and the word-of-the-week nine-letter COATTAILS.  Doing some quick back-of-the-envelope math, $5 for ending the streak + $4 for high L play - $2 entry fee = a huge $7 dollar profit for Mr. B.  Who says you can't make a living playing Scrabble?

2nd Charles Reinke won his first four games, extending his winning streak to thirteen (unlucky!) before losing to Andy Bohnsack, thus finishing 4-1 +294.  He beat brother Thomas Reinke 417-341, getting down TASTERS and CURATIVE while the latter twin was held uncharacteristically bingo-less.  Charles now has a five-game winning streak against his brother, but the lifetime series is still owned by Thomas, 29 wins to 26 losses with one tie.

3rd Richard Lauder ended up in third by ten spread points over Mary Becker with his final result of 3-1 +130.  He played a high-scoring game against Betty Hasselkus which he won 477-410, his GAPLESS and ADROITER prevailing over her HOOFERS and TRACKERS.  Richard also had an impressive three-bingo game against Helen Flores that he won 435-398, but one of the bingos was phony: GRABENDS (GRABENS would be good).  His valid bingos were ZESTIER and TANSIES.  Due to an editing mistake, Richard's play of TANSIES was previously reported as the phony TANSIERS.  We at madisonscrabble.com regret the error and assure our readers that journalistic integrity is at the forefront of every blog post we write.

Harwinder Dowd Makes Easy Work of Intermediates

1st Harwinder Dowd emerged from word battle with not a single loss to her name, finishing 3-0 +221.  Only her first opponent, Sharlie Miura, was able to eclipse the 300-mark against her, but Harwinder still won comfortably 342-309 with the aid of her bingo SEEKING.

2nd June Scott ended up at 2-1 +127, winning her first two games by large margins (350-256 against Aki Miura and 339-213 against Sharlie Miura) before losing to Harwinder Dowd.