The Bryaniac Returns to Winning Ways

1st Bryan Benwitz slashed and burned his way through 4 unworthy opponents, going 4-0 +386, ending a 7-week streak of Reinke domination. He made quick work of Dennis Lloyd in his first game, helped in large part by his play of LIBRATES (rhymes with VIBRATES). He then overcame having unplayable bingos on his first rack of DEIRSTV (there are two; can you find them?) against Andy Bohnsack to win 380-373. That game featured the nice extension of STOMATE (a type of pore) to OSTOMATE (one who has had an colostomy, or any other type of OSTOMY). After soundly defeating Gail Salm in his third game on the back of three bingos, he faced Thomas Reinke, against whom he had lost 15 of the last 16, and crushed him underneath his beard, 419-360.

2nd Thomas Reinke found out that even if he is lucky enough to avoid his brother over the Scrabble board, he still remains cursed to come in second place for all eternity, going 4-1 +417. He pulled double duty in the first round, facing Dave and Adrienne, winning each contest by 62 points. Dave, in the manner of a true sportsman, kindly opened the perfect letters for Thomas' bingos: first an O for PARERGON, and then a C for LINGUICA (a type of Portuguese sausage, normally spelled LINGUIÇA, but the Ç tile was mysteriously absent from that game). He then served as a Redeye warmup for Helen Flores, who put up a good fight, losing 373-402. The game might have been different for her had Thomas not played TRUSTEED, a word that she had just played the round before and had the challenge adjudicated by none other than Thomas himself! A four-bingo contest came next, with him winning 585-262, featuring SILIQUAE for 66 points, a score which would have been 60 points higher had the Q not been a blank.

3rd Dennis Lloyd won three games, going 3-1 +51, good enough for third place. Coincidence? I think not. After losing his first game to Bryan, he resolved to never lose again for the rest of his life; I'd say he's off to a good start. The first victim in this new "Pax Dennisa" was Sue Goldstein, where he played POSTURE and STATION in a 412-288 win. He then faced the current club leader, Charles Reinke, and won, of course, because what else is he going to do, 437-428, helped by a timely bingo of INVADING. Not content with dethroning the tyrant, he decided to test his luck by phonying against the ever-skeptical Andy Bohnsack, with SELENOID* (which could mean 'a metal similar to selenium', but has the actual definition of 'N/A') in his low-scoring 354-340 win.

A bunch of new bingos were played this week: LUNATES, LORNEST, DERACINE, PIANOLA (how was that not good before?), and the extremely fancy 95-point PROPYNES by Charles, which was chosen as word of the week, and also as "Definition of the week", with the helpful "a gaseous methyl acetylene". What does that even mean?