1st Charles Reinke, carrying with him the lingering stench of buffalo wings mixed with vague disappointment and cheap cologne, returned to club play with a 3-1 +302 record and secured first place. He opened with a big 461-309 win against the bingoless Bryan, while he himself played ENTREAT and SNIDEST. Following that, he upped his scoring by 10 points as he beat Thomas 471-350. In a stunning repeat of their Nationals matchup, Charles controlled the game and bingoed four times: BOINKED (v. BOINK this is a family friendly writeup, no definition), GENERALS, CREATION, and INAPTER. He had a third decisive win against Gail, scoring 489 and playing UNDERACT and FREESIAS. Things were looking good for an undefeated night, but Mary forcefully put an end to those illusions in the final match, as she crushed Charles 468-327, playing MANAGES (anagram SAGAMEN), UNSWEPT, and a killer FOLDERS for 98 late in the game. For contrast Here's the full unredacted list of bingos that Charles played: .

2nd Bryan Benwitz also went 3-1, but his spread of +54 meant that he was relegated to second place. He gave himself a big hole to work out of in the first game, as his negative 150 point margin against Charles meant he could make no more mistakes if he wanted a paragraph the next day. No one knows if he made any more mistakes or not, but he at least played well enough to beat his next three opponents. First up was Lynda, where he won on a tight board, 410-362. He then started off strong in the next game against Thomas, playing three bingos early en route to a 446-335 win. Those bingos were an opening-rack ETESIAN, DAIRYMEN, and SEALANT. He fanciest wordplay came against Gail, with the final being 410-343 in his favor, and the star of the show being his word-of-the-week find of BEEFCAKE (n. pictures of male physiques, or a male depicted in said pictures. The female analogue is CHEESECAKE).

Thomas played the relevant-to-current-events triple-triple HELITACK (n. the use of helicopters to fight forest fires) for 167 and was looking forward to winning word-of-the-week until Bryan came in and ruined everything with his BEEFCAKE.