New Words Not So Bad After All

1st Andy Bohnsack lengthened his winning streak to seven as he cruised through a tough lineup of opponents (Bryan, Thomas, Charles, Peter), going 4-0 +439 and averaging 465 points per game. He started off a little slowly with a "mere" 400-332 contest against Bryan Benwitz, a contest which contained nothing but low-scoring bingos: ATTAINS (66) and ISLANDER (60) for Bryan, DIVULGER (62) and STARLING (72) for Andy. After beating up on both Reinke twins, he still had energy left over to run a demolition job on Peter Schmiedicke, 554-376. That game featured SEVEN combined bingos, tied for most this year, with five of them coming from the victor's side: ABLEGATE, SAVARIN, SEAGOING, SAUTEING, and the new TAENIOID, which was chosen as word of the week. It has two anagrams that were present in the old dictionary, IDEATION and IODINATE.

2nd Thomas Reinke went 3-1 with a paradoxical -22 spread. He fought out a low-scoring win against Aaron Bader, 370-339, with just Thomas' ANTIPORN and Aaron's ANYWISE appearing on the board. The fingernails really started to get bitten when Thomas later pulled out a 405-404 victory over the formidable Peter Schmiedicke. Thomas continued the "P Bingo" theme with PASTORS and OVERPAST, but let Peter's phony WELDINGS slip through his usually confident word knowledge. Even more bingos containing P's were played by Thomas in later games: OPEROSE, TAPENADE, and TRIPTANE.

3rd Aaron Bader topped a cluster of players stuck at 3-2 with his overpowering +441 spread. Doing the opposite of Andy, Aaron lost once to each Reinke, but still commands winning records against Both. He quite handily took care of Helen Flores, holding her bingoless in a 447-281 triumph which saw him play OUTEARN and ESTUARY (maybe U's aren't so bad after all...? Actually, yeah they are). However, even less mercy was on display against Leslie Seltzer, with Aaron amassing a large portion of his cumulative spread in a 544-290 beating. Again, he thoroughly halted his opponent's efforts to bingo while getting CHOICES, SEMINAR, and PROTEIN (new anagram: REPOINT) for himself. 

Somewhat surprisingly, we had five bingos that can only be found in the new dictionary: TAENIOID (Andy), THONGIER (Bryan), NOVATES (Charles), CROTALE (Aaron), and NEMESIAS (Thomas). The editor would like to note that he had the new word SATINIER available, but opted for the higher-scoring INERTIAS instead. Other new words seen on boards included TONIFY, EJIDO, ZINCO, ZAIDY, ACAI, ERUV, ROO, PHO, TIX, AJI, and EMO. Of course, the quartet of new twos (DA, GI, PO, and TE) were all played multiple times.

Despite the large amount of new bingos, our progress on playing all the bingos in the book went from 16.3% to 15.6%. We will never reach 100% because nobody will ever play PIZZAZZ or PIZZAZZY, unless they contrive a scenario in which the bag contains two Z's or three blanks.