The Cake is Not a Lie

1st Thomas Reinke, fresh off a victory at this weekend's Madison tournament, continued his winning ways by going 4-0 +269. Always the model of consistency, he bingoed exactly twice in each game, an amount of bingoes that experts have quantified as being "absolutely the most perfect amount without a doubt" per game. In the first round, against the soon-to-depart Joe, he got down ANLASES (n. ANLAS, a medieval dagger, also ANLACE) and DEISTIC to counter his opponent's CTENOID (adj. comblike) and ALERTING. He followed those up with MAIDANS and STOMODEA against Gail, HAGDONS and the word-of-the-week DEJEUNER (French for "lunch", but English for "a breakfast", funny how that works out sometimes) against Aaron, and NONLIFE and SOLATED against his recurring foe Charles. For those curious, the head-to-head record for those two is 78 wins for Thomas, 73 wins for Charles, and 1 tie... only 1 tie? Shouldn't it be all ties?

2nd Aaron Bader shook off the mental rust accumulated from attending a tournament but not playing (thanks for doing the data entry!) by going 3-1 +291. A bingo-sparse 410-329 first-round matchup against Betty gave way to a slightly more bingo-laden matchup against Charles, where he won, 500-420. OVERLATE, FRETTING, and STEAMIER where Aaron's rack-clearers; Charles played the status-lowering DECLASSE as well as RENEGADO. Do not be fooled by his "close" 340-360 loss against Thomas. Scores can be deceiving. Only a foolish bag-emptying play by Thomas followed by an out-bingo allowed  a seeming blowout to become close. In the final game, he defeated Bryan 459-314, aided by his opening HEMITIC*, a presumed misspelling of HEMATIC. It is hard to blame Aaron, or anyone else who plays a phony; there are a whole lot of words in the dictionary. Like, a LOT. Hundreds, or even thousands of them. How is one supposed to keep them all straight?

3rd Richard Lauder went 3-1, the only person to do so on this night, so his -79 spread mattered not. The progress accomplished with a trio of close-ish wins by 84, 17, and 24 was wiped out by a 309-513 loss to Charles. Perhaps it is not well known to club members, but Richard, as the venerable director/founder of the club, has powers granted to him by the club charter that should make players leery of defeating him by too much. Charles, and others, should be thankful that Richard does not often exercise those powers.

In other news, it is time to update your mental list of "famous phonies", including such words as LIST REDACTED, to remove GUILTED, which, as Lynda sadly found out against Betty, is now acceptable. Also, big thanks to Lynda for directing last weekend's tournament, the many Madison-based winners of which were honored with a delicious cake.