What is Beauty?

1st Thomas Reinke took the top spot with his 3-1 +241 record, leaving no doubt as to who was the most attractive and charismatic person in the room. He beat Lynda 445-339 in the first round, probably because Lynda's first rack was IIRRUUW. I mean, how can someone ever recover from such a poor opening draw? It's just not possible. A close game followed against Aaron, with Thomas eventually losing 376-466. At least, it was close until Aaron bingoed out with TARTARIC. Thomas did plop down the nine-letter DITTANIES, but style points count for exactly zero real points. Against Richard, he got down three early bingoes in a row, BURNOUS (n. burnoose, a hooded cloak), OVERLAY, and EPIGENE (adj. occurring near the surface of the earth), allowing him to cruise to a 482-350 win. In the final game against Charles, Charles struck first with CITREOUS for 93 big points, Undaunted, Thomas bided his time until responding with some bingoes of his own: ORACHES, APERTURE, and a bag-emptying FRAILER. Charles had one more chance to bingo out and win, but was stymied by the J on his final two-tile draw.

2nd Aaron Bader went 3-1 +146 good for second place, but came in dead last in the club's secondary competition, "having two fully functioning arms". He got his night off to a good start against Dennis with an opening rack bingo of LECYTHI (n. LECYTHUS, an oil jar, also LEKYTHOS and LEKYTHUS). He later got down PENSILE, overcoming Dennis' bingoes of SEVERING and AIRIEST to win 467-371. You already know about his win against Thomas in the second round, but what you don't know is that in that game Aaron somehow bingoed with both a U and a W on his rack, with OUTWAIT. He also somewhat replicated that feat with a V instead of a W, bingoing with VIGOROUS. Who needs E's to bingo? Not him. Things went south for Aaron in the third game against Charles, where he  lost despite totally making up a word that's not even good in Collins. Charles didn't have the heart to challenge AVERRERS, preferring instead to bingo a bunch of times, with BOOGIES, TRIHEDRA, and FARINOSE. Aaron later tried MESQUINE*, which is good in Collins, but which Charles did have the heart to challenge off. Against Lynda in the last game, he squeaked out a 425-410 win, with both players playing two bingoes. If the bonus points you got for bingoing where the ONLY points in the game, I feel fairly confident in saying that this game would have ended in a tie.

3rd Charles Reinke went 3-0 +212 over the first three games and 0-1 -93 over the final one game, the end result being that he came in third. His demonstrated skill in finding nines paid off in his first-round match against Bryan, where he played CARAGEENS and won by 13 points, 410-397. Versus Helen, he won 461-317 while playing MATIEST and DAILIES. In addition to those bingos, he had two bingo-esque power-tile plays on triple word scores, ROQUES and TROOZ. Don't let his success with the Q trick you into thinking it's a good tile; it remains and will almost surely always remain one of the worst tiles in the game. After dispatching Helen, he beat Aaron as detailed above, and then lost to Thomas, also as detailed above. But let's just remember how unfair it was that he drew the J to go with his AENRST rack.