Scrabble Tiles Desire Nothing More Than To Be Arranged Into Words; Charles Obliges

1st Charles Reinke followed up a successful weekend performance with a successful-er performance on Wednesday night, going 4-0 +460. He scored 476 in both of his opening two games, the first against Joe, the second against Lynda. Against Lynda, he got down two nice bingos, CABOTAGE and NITINOL (n. a nickel-titanium alloy). His third game versus Thomas was the usual bingo-fest: Charles got GUSHIER, MALARIAN, and JETBEADS (n. an ornamental shrub), while Thomas got LINNIES and ACARIDAN. Fun fact: MALARIAN and ACARIDAN have exactly the same probability of being drawn out of the bag! Fine, maybe that wasn't a very fun fact. Whatever. I thought it was cool. Anyway. In the final game, for the second week in a row, Charles faced Gail to determine who would earn first place. Last week it was Gail who came out on top; this week, Charles won decisively, 451-328.

2nd Thomas Reinke went 4-and-Charles +296, managing to maintain a slim lead on his brother in the yearly club standings. Pulling double duty in the first round, he beat Helen and Mary, despite getting out-bingoed 3-2 against Mary. Thomas played ERMINES (bonus multimedia section: if you search "Ermine in a tree" on YouTube, you will find a very cute video) and VEDALIAS (not to be confused with VIDALIAS), while Mary played PAROLING, TWISTERS, and FRUITIER. In the second game, Andy's early EQUATES used up all of his luck, while Thomas drew a bunch of bingos for a 472-329 win. After losing to Charles, he beat Richard in a low-scoring 361-302 contest. Only two bingos were played in that sad, horrible excuse for a Scrabble game: Richard played the ever-useful ANISOLE and Thomas got down PARKIEST (adj. chilly).

3rd Joe Horowitz went out (nearly) on top, going 3-1 +160 in his final night as a regular attendee at our club. He bingoed twice against Charles in the first game, with TURDINE (adj. of, relating to, or characteristic of thrushes) and WINTLES, and lost 377-476. Then, going against all preconceived notions about Scrabble, he bingoed only once in each of his next three games, but won them all! I can feel the paradigms shifting as I type. We all wish the best of luck to Joe at med school, but urge him to remember that Scrabble is to be made the first priority, always and forever, no matter what.

Mark played the word of the week, DUNGHEAP (n. self-explanatory). In other news, congratulations to Charles for winning division one at this weekend's tournament, Lynda for coming in second, and double congratulations to Darcy for dominating division three in undefeated fashion.