1st Thomas Reinke returned from a myserious 1-week absence with no evidence of having taken such a long break (probably because he played a tournament in the interim), going 4-0 +594. He beat Gail 478-405 to start his night, playing ESTROGEN followed by IONOGEN, the last hooking his previous bingo for OESTROGEN. Gail got down DEPICTS and DIRTIER, as welling as challenging off his phony OUTCLEAN*. Only CLEANOUT is acceptable. In the second game he scored 546, playing CONTUSED, BALLGAME, ATHEROMA (n. a disease of the arteries), and TSARDOM (swap the first two letters for the similar concept of STARDOM). His bingo-ey ways continued against James, who started things off with a double-double RENATURE. The next four bingos were all Thomas, RESEATED, ALEHOUSE, RAINDROP, and AGENTIAL. The final total after the onslaught was 518-323 in Thomas' favor. For the final game, he played a game of Collins with Mark, but didn't get to use his (extremely limited) British word knowledge while playing CYANINE, MENIALS, and LENITIES all in a row early in the game. He used that advantage to hold on to the win, 431-393.

2nd Charles Reinke went 3-1 +489 to capture second place. He won 454-328 against Mary in the first game, playing BELLOWER (not to be confused with BELLFLOWER) and NOTATES. Here's a tip about NOTATES: if you have that rack, don't even bother looking for 8s, because no letter goes with it to make another word. In the next game, he lost to Dave 347-412, failing to bingo while watching Dave play SENNETS and EVENEST. Dave has won 3 of the last 7 against Charles, a much better win rate then he had in the previous dozens of games. Charles got back to his winning ways against Bryan, 441-359. He bingoed late with ESTRONE (which, like ESTROGEN, takes an O in front for OESTRONE), and Bryan's promising ADEHORT rack yielded no winning bingos. In the final game, he notched the club's highest game of the season with a 628 against Helen. The main reason for such a high score was his nice find of BIVOUACS through the U for 185 points. Add three more bingos, and you get a lot of points.

3rd James Frankki made the trek from Milwaukee to play some Scrabble with us, ending up in third place with a 3-1 +186 record, barely beating out Dave G. Versus Bryan in the first round, against one of the best Madison has to offer, he won 400-380, playing DEFECTOR (for 98 points somehow) and ORIENTED. Against Helen, he scored 482 with bingoes of NONBASIC (adj. not basic, what a definition) and PINHOLES. NONBASIC drew a challenge, which is understandable, because we don't have enough of a dataset on James to know if he plays phonies or not. In the next game, he faced the full brunt of Madison's fury, taking four bingos to the chin and losing 323-518 against Thomas. In the final game, he faced the undefeated Dave, and had to win by 100-ish points to surpass him in the final standings. He did just that, countering Dave's FATUOUS with his own EROSION and winning 469-345.