1st James Frankki put in his best performance at our club since moving to Madison, going 4-0 +168 and coming in first place. His night got off to a great start with an opening bingo of QUAKIER for 100 points in his game against Bryan. It's tough to come back from 100 points down right away, but as they always say "it's better to be down by 100 at the beginning than at the end". Over the rest of the game, Bryan made up 14 points of the deficit, and the end result was a 469-383 for James. In the next game, he beat Helen 372-310, with him playing SUNRISE and Helen playing ONAGERS. An ONAGER is a wild ass of central Asia, and can also be pluralized as ONAGRI. He followed this up with a close 406-392 over current club leader Thomas. He had bingos of SESTINAS and a tight-fitting RECLAIM, while Thomas could only manage LASERED. James faced a rack of clunky consonants at the end of the game with few places to play them, which made the final score closer than it maybe would have been. He had another close game in the finale, a 412-406 win against Richard. If he was feeling the pressure, he didn't show it, as he found the frustratingly-close-to-a-palindrome DETONATED.

2nd Aaron Bader went 4-0 +114 in his weekly Collins-dictionary series with Mark, averaged 473 (to his opponent's 445), and came in second place. Their opener was a real barn-burner, with Aaron winning 521-494, playing BALKIER, TELEGONY, AMINITY. He won this game despite Mark's heroic five-bingo effort. Honestly, if I lost a game while playing five bingos, I would mutter "dang it all" and look sadly at the board for a full ten seconds. The next was also a barn-burner (no barns were harmed in the making of this writeup), the final being 484-478 in Aaron's favor. Aaron had bingos of EPHEBOI (n. EPHEBOS, a young man in ancient Greece) and IDEATES, and Mark had GARROTE, SPINATE, and ALIENATE. The third game was the only one that wasn't close, as Aaron won 436-362 playing TARAIRES* and DILATANT. His winning margins went back to being uncomfortably close in the last round, with 452-445 being the final. I'm beginning to think that this whole "Collins" thing really inflates the average score for those who participate in its frenzy.

3nd Thomas Reinke went 4-1 +580, a fitting performance for a guy who has been described as "the Thomas Reinke of Scrabble". He faced two in the first round, Betty and Dave, and won convincingly by a combined 449 points and played 6 bingos. Things were closer against Richard, as he had to fend off his opponent's triple-triple of TROTLINE (n. a strong fishing line). Despite that high-scoring play, Thomas won 398-324. He suffered his only defeat of the night against James, 392-406, in the third round. Luckily for him, he and James are playing in different divisions of the Chicago tournament this weekend, so he doesn't have to fear even more beatdowns over Memorial Day. In the final game of the night, he was paired against Bryan and won 449-378. Bryan started off with HARLOTS and later added ASTONIED, and Thomas played SMARTIE, TUNNELER, and OEILLADE (n. an amorous glance, spelled in French as œillade).

Mark played 13 bingos this week despite going 0-4, so it seemed fair to award him Word of the Week for his play of PROROGUE (v. to suspend a parliamentary session without formally ending it). Relatedly, I seem to remember Dave once playing the noun form, PROROGATION, by placing PRO in front of the already-played ROGATION, but such a play, not being a bingo, could not win Word of the Week.