No Snow to Ruin Our Fun On This Night

1st Aaron Bader cruised through his allotted four games of Scrabble, winning them all and ending up with a 4-0 +306 record. He came out 37 points ahead in a high-scoring game with Lynda, the final being 453-416. He played RECORDS and ACADEMY in that one, but let Lynda get away with the not-even-good-in-Collins BRIDGERS* (n. one that bridges, not that unreasonable in my opinion). ABRIDGER is acceptable, which makes way less sense. In the second round, he upped his point total by 1 point, scoring 454 against Dave, with bingos were PROSIER, KETAMINE, and RELEASE. Remember that last one, because it's going to come up later. After beating Dave, he faced Thomas, and won a close one, 402-378, playing... RELEASE! Wow! Twice in a row! Hopefully he put an E on it for the odd-looking RELEASEE in at least one of the cases. To cap off his perfect night, he held Bryan bingoless in the final round, winning 439-341. The win marks 8 straight for him against that particular opponent; Bryan can probably look forward to better luck in other areas of his life given his unluckiness in this area. If you win the lottery, Bryan, don't forget to make a generous donation to the club!

2nd Gail Salm bingoed 11 times on the night, and was rewarded for her rack-clearing skills with a 3-1 +208 record. She outbingoed her first opponent, Charles, 2-to-1, but lost 358-412. What's the point of holding the reigning club champion to only one bingo if he's just going to win anyway? Things got better for her in the second game, as she beat Lynda 491-363. Lynda was facing two opponents in that round, but even her full attention wouldn't have stopped Gail from dropping four bingos on her: RANCOUR, LIONIZER, BLOATERS, and SALTIRE (n. a heraldic design, often called St. Andrew's Cross, also SALTIER, SAUTOIR, or SAUTOIRE). Against Betty, she bingoed three more times, with SOLVERS, PILSNER, and ROOMIES, to win 404-348. Betty herself didn't bingo, but she must have been doing some other things to keep the score that close. In the final round, she faced the similarly 2-1 Dave in a battle to see who would get the coveted "paragraph in the writeup" award. Gail's desire for the paragraph led her to a 428-350 victory, and now the award is being presented.

3rd Lynda Finn went 3-2 +139, her two losses coming to the first and second place finishers of the night. After her opening loss to Aaron, 416-453, she faced Helen and Gail in a two-on-one. One of the games was, I would guess, more enjoyable for her, and it was probably the one where she won by 150 points, while playing COGNIZE and NOONTIDE. In the third round, she faced the still-stunned-from-a-club-cancelling-amount-of-snow Richard, and won 441-376. She played LETTERER (RELETTER is also good), MARTINET, and SLEEVING in that game. All this led to a final-round game against Thomas, which she won decisively, 471-385. Thomas played ANNULOSE and TEASELS, while Lynda played BARMIEST and SLEAVED, the second of which drew a challenge from her doubtful/sad/confused/hurt opponent. Any reasonable person would know that SLEAVE means "to separate into filaments" and would definitely take the D. Lynda is now 5-5 in her last 10 against Thomas, slowly coming back from a rough start in their overall head-to-head matchup.

Helen played the word-of-the-week, SAVARIN. After much disagreement and deliberation, it was determined that it means "a yeast cake baked in a ring mold". Helen even claims that she made one, once upon a time. I'm looking at pictures of them right and they look pretty good now, to be honest.