Four Undefeated Sessions In a Row for Club Champion

1st Charles Reinke went undefeated again, this just keeps happening, finishing with a 4 wins, no losses, and an appropriate-for-the-setting +666 spread. He started off with a 416-290 win against Helen, where he navigated a closed board for the entire game before bingoing out with STRINES (n. English as spoken in Australia). Unsatisfied with the amount of bingo action in that game, he played four against Aaron in the next round: ALENCONS, DRAWTUBE, SILVEXES for 122, and REALISER. Oh, and he scored 543 while doing so. An impressive total indeed, until you see what he did in the next game: a 583-403 win over Lynda. Lynda triple-tripled with LURDANES for 140, but Charles played GROUTIER, DERIVING, VITTLES, GRANITIC, and NETIZENS (n. a frequent user of the Internet). 9 bingos in 2 games is no small feat, but how would you react if I said he bingoed NINE MORE times in his final game????? Disbelief would be the proper reaction, because I don't think anyone has ever bingoed that many times, and in reality he only did so twice against long-traveling visitor David Weiss. A close game turned into a decisive 454-333 win on his back-to-back DOLICELY and EXTREMES. In case people weren't aware: Charles is on a 16-game winning streak right now, having gone undefeated 4 straight sessions. I'm starting to worry that he's never going to lose again.

2nd Lynda Finn went 4-1 -73, her low spread attributable to Charles' 5-bingo onslaught against her. She opened with a 2-on-1, winning 403-372 against Dave K. and 393-370 against Dave G. A 3-on-1 with the third David was planned for that round, but didn't prove to be feasible. Her most impressive win of the night came against Thomas in the second round, 505-460. Thomas started off big with FREEZES for 103 and GENOCIDE for 89 back-to-back, leaving her in a big hole, but she stormed back playing TURNERS, BEACHING, and the fancy five-vowel-eight word-of-the-week AGUELIKE (adj. resembling ague, malarial fever), along with some high-scoring power tile plays. Thomas could do little but watch, and their combined total of 965 is the fourth-highest of the season. As already detailed, her triple-triple of LURDANES for 140 against Charles didn't come close to winning her the game, but it did win her 5 dollars, which is almost as good, really. Maybe even better, if you consider that the real joy in Scrabble is not winning or losing but in finding the best plays. In the final round, she faced Helen (who was in a 2-on-1 herself, because Lynda for some reason didn't want to do two in the same night) and won 385-377. Helen got down IRONIST (having just had that word played on her by Aaron in the previous round) and LICENSED, while Lynda got RIVIERA.

3rd Aaron Bader went 3-1 -41, his low spread attributable to Charles' 4-bingo onslaught against him. His first-round match against Bryan ended 435-354 in his favor. He played the Collins-only RATLING* in that game (RATLINE and RATLIN are the acceptable variants in the "normal" dictionary), but Bryan later hooked it for his own bingo so it wasn't all bad for him. Things went south for him against Charles when he foolishly put down a D in the triple lane, allowing his opponent to play DRAWTUBE for a ton of points. This illustrates a key strategy regarding the game of Scrabble: playing letters on the board means your opponent could use them to play their own letters, so you should probably avoid making a play most (if not all) turns. Things got better in the third round, where he faced Helen and Thomas (who was very upset at being part of the "two" instead of the sole "one") in a two-on-one. He beat Helen 384-307 with his SERMONIC overcoming Helen's WIZARDS. Against Thomas, he played IRONIST and OUTRIDE and won, 385-345, a low scoring game that should cause both players some measure of embarrassment.