Thomas Reinke Goes Streaking

1st Thomas Reinke went undefeated for the second straight week, extending his winning streak past 10 and all the way up to 11. His opening defeat of Andy Bohnsack featured a miss of NONSKIER, a word that much more aptly describes Thomas than what was actually played, EINKORNS, einkorn being a type of wheat. An unnaturally low-scoring game occured in the normally action-packed Reinke-Reinke matchup in the second round, with each of the twins playing only one bingo apiece, Charles with WINKERS and Thomas with TALESMAN (n. a person summoned to fill a vacancy on a jury, not a misspelling of TALISMAN). In his third game against Bryan Benwitz, an early successful challenge by Bryan awakened Thomas' wrath (others call it luck), which was channeled into three consecutive bingos, HYALINE, ARBORES, and CHEVRES, the last of which will be placed on the "Cheesy Bingos" list. This author has been told not to speak of his final game of the night, a win for the T-twin against Peter Schmiedicke,  because it "just kind of was a sad game all around".

2nd Aaron Bader played smothering defense on his way to 3-0 +557, holding his opponents to an average of 291, utilizing the tried and true "draw all the tiles by playing lots of bingos" Scrabble strategy. Flexing his near-perfect word-finding abilities, he played eight bingos against his victim's one, the highest scoring being a double-double EXORDIA for 112. Sensing that a matchup with Thomas was inevitable, he left before the final game, maintaining his perfect record. You can't run from your problems forever, Aaron!

3rd Charles Reinke found that if you stare unblinkingly at your tiles for long enough, sometimes words pop up out of nowhere, going 3-1 +246. Ignoring deep philopsophical questions like "What is a word really?" and "As master of my own reality, should I not be allowed to play any word I wish?", he defeated Bryan by 1 point, 426-425. ORANGIER and SERVITOR (n. a male servant) were his bingos, not quite matched by Bryan's DETOURS and OCTAVES. After falling to his brother, he picked up his winning ways by unleashing his bingo-cannon against Lynda Finn, playing four, including SLACKENS for 107. Charles saved his best for last against Helen Flores, scoring 499 and finding the triple-triple MATELOTE (n. a fish stew, not to be confused with MATELOT, a sailor) for 140 game-winning points.

Only one new bingo was played tonight, Bryan's RACINOS. The word of the week was Helen's ENSCONCE.