Charles Reinke Gets Tenth Straight, is Denied Glory of Eleventh

1st Charles Reinke went 3-1 +274, leading the clump of players who finished with just one loss. He won his first two games of the night to reach the enviable "ten wins in a row" milestone, thus earning a cool five bucks to spend on dictionaries. The first was a convincing 450-341 win over Lynda Finn, propelled by bingos of SHEREEF, OUTRODE, and INLAYERS> The second was not quite so convincing, with Charles winning a tense one against Mary Becker, 381-375. Then Richard Lauder came along and decisively snapped Charles' winning streak, thus earning a cool five bucks to spend on golf clubs. That game ended with a final score of 402-342; Charles' low score could be attributed to the fact that the bingo box on his scorecard was utterly blank. Richard, meanwhile, got down TONIEST and BUMPERS. Charles did redeem himself in the fourth game by creaming Aaron Bader, 530-311.

2nd Bryan Benwitz finished at 3-1 for the third straight week, but his +231 spread indicated a performance that was not quite as dominant as past excursions had been. His big game was a 480-276 victory against Betty Hasselkus. Betty did get down SPOUTING as a bingo, but otherwise struggled to score while Bryan played RESTRING and UPSTART. That good fortune continued into the next game against Aaron Bader, and Bryan won again, 403-343. Bryan's inexplicably dismal head-to-head record against Aaron is now somewhat less dismal, at 6 wins, 16 losses, and a tie. In sadder news, Bryan's chance to go undefeated was thwarted in the final game by none other than third-place finisher Thomas Reinke by a score of 348-437. An 80-point SCREENED was Bryan's lone delegate to the bingo summit; Thomas sent REIFIES, SAINFOIN (anagram: SINFONIA), and UNBALED.

3rd Thomas Reinke's +158 spread was the lowest among the 3-1's, and he averaged under 400 for the second straight week, but he gets a paragraph anyway. Things got off to a promising start when he thoroughly outscored Dennis Lloyd, 474-304. In that game, Dennis got down TENNIES, his only bingo of the night; not too bad since he went 3-2 himself! Unfortunately, Thomas also outbingoed Dennis in addition to outscoring him, playing REASCENT, GLOBATED, and LINGUISA (a type of pork sausage, usually spelled LINGUICA). Fortune then discontinued smiling upon Thomas in order to frown upon him, and the result was a soul-, mind-, and body-crushing 263-525 loss to Aaron Bader. Aaron played SOFTENS, STINKERS, STUIVERS, and TORTURED for his bingos; some of those words are appropriate to the circumstances under which they were played. Thomas did redeem himself somewhat in the next game with a 417-256 win over Helen Flores.