No One Brought Any Leftover Halloween Candy

1st In what is becoming a weekly occurrence, Bryan Benwitz came in first with a 4-0 +467 record. In the first round, he beat Lynda 478-356, most of the spread coming from his held-for-an-eternity-but-begrudgingly-accepted play of VICHIES (n. VICHY, a type of mineral water, usually resembling the naturally effervescent type from springs in Vichy, France) for 105. Can anyone say "word-of-the-week"? Against Charles, he played tight defense and prevented his normally bingo-prone opponent from bingoing at all, winning 404-317. He got down the low-probability SCORCHER in that game as well as the higher-probability PAINTIER. In the next round, he got some small measure of revenge against Thomas, who had beaten him three times at Lynda's tournament last weekend, with a 418-382 win. Both players got two bingos down, so it was Bryan's late X-bomb that sealed the deal. He faced the similarly-undefeated Terry in the final round and showed no mercy to the visitor, winning 510-288. I would make a joke involving his bingo of BEHEADS, but maybe it wouldn't be in good taste.

2nd Gail Salm went 3-1 +185, going undefeated if you just ignore her first game. A first game where Helen beat her 482-305. Not a good start, but Gail recovered, first by beating Lynda 446-375 with the bingos DETOURS and BREEZING. Against Dave, she need only one bingo, TREENAIL (n. a wooden peg, also TRENAIL) to win 423-235. She must have been saving her bingos for when she needed them most urgently, as she bingoed four times against Thomas, winning 479-376. She played AUNTLIER, ENTAILED, ERMINES, and went out with VALINES for good measure. Thomas did get down TARGETED, but it wasn't even close to enough. A triple-triple or two would have served him a lot better.

3rd Richard Lauder went 3-1 +5, averaging a dominant 365 compared to his opponent's measly 364. He won 378-370 against David in the first round, playing FEELERS versus David's MUSICAL. He also challenged off David's reasonable attempt of TOTALERS* (only RETOTALS is good), which given the final score made a big difference. His attempts at bingoing in the second game were futile as he lost 312-360 to Terry, whose attempts at bingoing were successful by way of AIRIEST (the club's favorite bingo, now played 30 times!). In the next game, he squeaked out a victory over multiple-time club champ Charles, 375-372. Against Warren in the fourth round, he won 396-354, playing BARONIES for 90 as well as TIGERISH, which drew a challenge. You can also spell that word TIGRISH, which looks even worse, somehow.

Bonus paragraph: 4th Terry Hope made the long and trecherous journey to Madison to play four games of Scrabble, and she won three of them. Her hopes of an undefeated night/positive spread were dashed when she faced the always-unwelcoming Bryan, but 3-1 is still pretty good.