Charles Reinke Pulls Further Ahead in Club Standings, but within His Mind, the Phrase "Eleven Months to Go" Echoes with a Terrible Clamour

1st Charles Reinke went 4-0 +460, clearly deserving of first place on a night where every other player had at least two losses. He couldn't have asked for a better start when he opened up the evening with a 544-364 victory over Richard Lauder, playing MOIDORE (n. a former Portuguese coin), ORGANIC, and ATTAINED to Richard's PENISES and CINDERS. Later, he would defeat a seemingly-unstoppable Dave Gilligan (fresh off wins against Thomas and Andy) by a convincing margin, 454-289. Both players were limited to just one high-probability bingo apiece; BOILERS for Dave, SATINET for Charles. The clean sweep was finally swept cleanly as Charles took down his brother in the fourth and final game, 436-418. Some elite word knowledge was on display for that one, with Charles playing ENVIOUS and CARDING against Thomas' NARROWS and DESTAIN.

2nd Thomas Reinke averaged a low (for him) 399 per game in going 3-2 +88. As alluded to in the above paragraph, Dave Gilligan was able to score an upset win against the high-powered scoring fiend, 396-353, thanks to bingos of DICIEST and REPRISE (Thomas had COARSER and ATROPINS). Thomas' best game was undoubtedly his encounter with Bryan Benwitz, an encounter that ended with Thomas proudly placing a checkmark in the winners' column and scores of 427 and 353 in the appointed boxes. Bryan got just one bingo, LOAMIEST, but just one bingo isn't usually enough against Thomas, who had three of them, FASTING, PARTNERS, and URBANIZE. A game versus Peter Schmiedicke was a more closely-contested affair, with Thomas prevailing in the end, 408-391. It is interesting to note that all of the bingos played in that game (DELAINE for Thomas, HARVEST and TINWARE for Peter) all have exactly one anagram: ALIENED, THRAVES, and TAWNIER.

3rd Richard Lauder may have had the lowest spread ever to appear in the top three, as he finished with a 3-2 -330 record. His 180-point loss against Charles Reinke is documented above, but even worse than that was a 243-525 drubbing at the callous hands of one Andy Bohnsack. Andy unblinkingly hogged (or stole???) all the bingo tiles, winning the bingo battle 3-0 with finds of ORGIAST, CIGARET, and INANEST. The rest of Richard's games were wins, but not of sufficient magnitude to crawl out of the huge point spread deficit. He downed Gail Salm 398-367 despite again being outbingoed, getting just TOLLERS to Gail's SKULKER and STANINE (anagram of Andy's earlier INANEST). Richard also was victorious against Peter Schmiedicke, 420-389, playing OUTSPED and KNOTTED to counter Peter's SUNDIAL and OVERATE. Their lifetime series now stands at 40-34 in Richard's favor.

No bingos from the new dictionary were played; in fact, very few bingos that could be described as "cool" were played either. Mark Kenas' CRUCIBLE was chosen as word of the week in absence of any other suitable candidates, other than perhaps Gail Salm's low-probability, double-K SKULKER.