1st Mary Becker came out on top of the closely-bunched field, going 3-1 +136. She earned a good chunk of her spread in the opening round, where she had a 399-268 win against Sue, playing SANDIER. As many have found out, the problem with winning big in the first round is that you often find yourself playing a twin in the second round, and so Mary fulfilled the prophecy by facing Charles. He got off to a slow start, but eventually won 410-339. Mary, for her part, did successfully play the correct spelling of WIENIES (WEINIES* is no good, but both WIENERS and WEINERS are). If you ever get confused about that particular word, remember that you can play EISWEIN (n. a wine made from frozen grapes, also ICEWINE) from that rack instead, which is maybe less confusing? In the next game, she defeated Dave 364-285, playing TESTIER and preventing her opponent from bingoing with his blank. Her closest game came in the final round, as she narrowly escaped the other David and his out-bingo of SUICIDE, winning 353-347. Her own bingo of KEELING likely made the difference in that game, and also meant that she bingoed at a tidy 1:1 rate over the night.

2nd Bryan Benwitz came in second at 3-1 +110, despite being held bingo-less in two games. The bingos in his first game came early, RADIATE for him and SYNTONE for his opponent, Thomas. Bryan used the free turns from Thomas' early exchanges to get a big lead, which he then watched dwindle into almost nothing before finally winning 398-390. He then had an incredibly low scoring (no offense) game with Dave, which he won 319-278. Defense can be fun, guys, but don't overdo it. Surprisingly, given the score, Dave did manage a bingo, STERNAL. Bryan unleashed his full fury against David, winning big with a score of 542. He played HEADWAYS for 104, as well as SANTERIA and EQUITES (n. a class of ancient Romans, singular EQUES, so don't play EQUITE*). As big of a hurting as he put on his opponent in that game, he received in kind against Charles, as he lost 303-512.

3rd Charles Reinke went 3-2 +262, a mark below his usual winning percentage, but still came in third because we don't believe in awarding paragraphs based on "best above expectations". He started off playing two, Gail and Dave. Against Gail he bingoed four times with VULPINE, FAVORERS, GLOSSIER, and SELADANG (n. a wild ox, also SALADANG) and won 505-399. He wasn't so lucky against Dave, as he lost 348-400 due to Dave's fancy out-bingo of PREMOLT (adj. preceding a molt). His rack of EMLOPT plus a blank only had that one bingo; talk about a clutch find! Charles recovered to beat Mary 419-339 in round two, with his bingo of PARRIDGE (an alternate spelling of PORRIDGE) making the difference. He took his second loss of the evening in the next game, losing to Thomas 377-458. He managed to get down OPEROSE, but Thomas' 9-letter LAMPOONED left him too stunned to do much else. His spread at this point of the night wasn't up to his standards, so he beat Bryan by 200 to make things look a little more respectable. Both his bingos were high-scoring, BETRAYS for 93 and SAINTDOM for (somehow) 104.

Dave got word-of-the-week with JAWBONED. JAWBONE is a noun which means, oddly, "a bone of the jaw", but is also a verb which means "to attempt to convince".